When Marc Okrand graduated from University of California Berkeley with a degree in linguistics decades ago, he never guessed he'd become the mastermind behind a language with one of the biggest cult followings in the world.

Klingon — the official language spoken by the fictional warrior race in the Star Trek franchise — has taken on a life of its own. In addition to being newly added to Bing's language translator feature, it's been translated into Shakespeare, has its own language institute and is spoken all over the world.

Okrand visits the set of each new Star Trek film — the latest one opened this weekend — and teaches the actors how to pronounce and approach such a harsh-sounding, complicated language. So complicated, in fact, he still has to reference the dictionary he created to get it right.

"The language actually started without me when a half a dozen Klingon lines were spoken in the original 1979 Star Trek movie," Okrand told Mashable. "I received a call to expand and grow the language for the third installment and have been involved with the franchise ever since."

SEE ALSO: Bing Adds Klingon to Language Translator

To develop the language, Okrand analyzed the existing lines, deciding if each syllable would be a word of its own. He imposed grammatical structure, created patterns and documented the vocabulary he made.

"I made a lot of arbitrary decisions in the beginning," Okrand said. "It was a lot easier to make up the rules than to stick with them from then on out."

Similar to a partial house built on a movie set, Okrand didn't set out to create a full language: "I wanted it to appear complete, but only create the words we needed. Over time, however, the language grew."

Now, there are nearly 3,000 Klingon words. Although this is still fairly small for a language, that hasn't stopped people from studying it. There's even a virtual Klingon Language Institute online for people to analyze the language. It's even been translated into famous literary works.

"There is a line when a toast is proposed in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Spock says you can't appreciate Hamlet until you have read it in Klingon, and just like that, fans translated it into Klingon. It's brilliant. When Shakespeare is in prose, Klingon is in prose. When parts are in poetry, Klingon is in iambic pentameter."

Despite all of the Star Trek fans worldwide, Okrand believes only 100 people can speak Klingon fluently.

SEE ALSO: Type 'Beam Me Up' on Bing for a 'Star Trek' Surprise

"A lot of people can speak it better than me," he said. "When I wrote the dictionary, I thought people would put it on their coffee table and reference it for fun, but a few years later, I found out they were dissecting and analyzing it. And thanks to the Internet, people were meeting on message boards to talk in Klingon."

Klingon enthusiasts meet up with each other all over the world, and for those who speak different languages, Klingon is the only way they can communicate.

"Some people are into the culture and costumes of Star Trek and some are more interested in the language," he said. "I try not to make up too many new words because people won't understand them in the films, but at the same time, the language fans want them."

The most recognizable word in Klingon is Qalpa', which means "success," but Okrand continually comes up with new words when needed.

"When a Star Trek Monopoly board came out, I added new vocabulary," he said. "I guess 'mortgage' never came up in Klingon before."

Image courtesy Paramount Pictures