I wrote this short story in the fall of 2006, for a class I took called “Linguistics of Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond.” If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, I actually had to learn Klingon. Or, at least enough to finish the Klingon-English and English-Klingon translation exercises we were assigned for homework.

Although since the class was, fundamentally, about linguistics, one assignment required us to write about an incident where language causes a humorous or humiliating misunderstanding. My short story involves both.

An Alien Courtship

A year ago today, on August 8th, 2048, an alien species landed on Earth.