Origins of speech in Klingons?

[Kesvirit]

quoth Klythe in Klingon use of the Cloaking device: After all, we have only been using language for perhaps as much as ten thousand years.

A key to speech in hominids is a small horseshoe-shaped bone in the throat called the hyoid. It is a "floating" bone in that it does not articulate with any other bones, but attaches to the larynx via muscles and ligaments and serves as an "anchor" to the organs involved in articulating vocalizations. Its existance does not guarantee powers of vocal speech -- the requisite brain structures must also be present, but do no fossilize, and short of a cast of the interior of the skull is impossible to verify -- but it does indicate speech potential. Consensus amongst paleoanthropologists, such as it ever is, holds the likely beginnings of speech by Neanderthals at around 60,000 years ago -- a far cry from ten thousand.

Or were you speaking of speech among Klingons? If you have any information or evidence indicating the origins of speech potential in Klingons (and/or their ancestors), I would be most curious to see it. Many Klinfolk attach great importance to speech in their estimations of status vis-a-vis Klingons and other organisms as evidenced by the {-mey} vs. {-pu'} distinction* in plurals. I can see how the beginnings of speech potential amongst Klingons might be seen by many as the factor that elevated them over the threshhold of sentience, thus making them truly and irrefutably Klingon.

*{-pu'} for beings capable of language (spoken or not), {-mey} for those incapable of language

[Abbot Nej vIt]

Perhaps we Need to "Establish" a History, and a F.A.Q. for all of those Bits and Pieces of Information that Likely will NEVER be Found in Canon, but Tempt us all to Guess anyway?

[Klythe]

In my defense, I was thinking in terms of hard evidence of language use.  Since auditory preservation of speech has only been possible withing the last century or two, what means written language.  Last I read the Oldest Writing sample that has been discovered is a paltry 5,500 years old.

    There is speech that is not language.  Several animals have a fairly large range of vocalization, and many more have a wider range than they use.   Language users are not the only ones to have these sorts of structures.   I believe I read an article about wolves and some sort of large ungulates(maybe deer or elk?) that also had analogous vocal structures one thought unique to language users.

    Even then, it is not all that far of a cry...  It's still within an order of magnitude of my assertion.  And another order of magnitude beyond that we would have been guided solely by the voice of our blood.

    As far as establishing a history...  Right now, that would consist of far too much wild speculation...   Canonically, Klingons, Terrans, Cardassians, Vulcans/Romulans and others are all from the same stock species the "Preservers" spread through-out the Galaxy.   Perhaps that stock species had a language, perhaps it only had language potential.