When speaking in (or having the words translated to) English, the answer is apparently "yes". However, the Klingon language has no grammatical differences for the sex/gender of an object or individual. The third person pronoun can be translated as either «he» or «she».
«ghaH vIlegh jIH» can be translated as either «I see him», or «I see her».
Thus, the modern Klingon word for a space vessel «Duj» has no sex/gender. It is an it - not he, not she. It.
This is further reflected in how plurals are formed for different noun classes / categories of things.
The categories of things (similar to "women, fire, and dangerous things" being in a category together in Dyirbal, or how ships are gendered female, or Japanese's numerous counters) in Klingon are:
- Living beings capable of using language
- Parrots do not fall into this category (see HolQeD 10:4, p. 4–5)
- Robots are not living (sorry Data) (see when to use -wIj and when to use -wI’)
- Babies, while they don't speak, are capable of using language
- Body parts
- General
So, this is how the Klingon language is structured for its categories. Unlike many Terran languages, there is no difference in the grammar for sex/gender. Space vessels are "it"s. They are not beings capable of language and they are not body parts. It's an "it".
The use of ship in context can be seen in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country where the poor translation was a minor plot point:
In this, the question "What ship is that" is repeated several times. The Klingon is «Dujvetlh 'oH nuq, rIn?»
Duj is «ship» as mentioned above.
-vetlh is «that» in the situation that it isn't nearby
'oH is translated as «it» (compare with ghaH which is he/she)
nuq is quite simply «what»
rIn is the verb «finished»
Together, this is a bit overly wordy translated as «that not nearby ship, what? over.»
This agrees with the script:
SLEEPY KLINGON: (in Klingonese) What ship is that? Over.
Note the use of «'oH»
Going back to the Klingon Dictionary, section 5.1 describes pronouns:
{jIH} <I, me> {maH} <we, us>
{soH} <you> {tlhIH} <you (plural)>[[soH=>SoH]]
{ghaH} <he/she, him/her> {chaH} <they, them>
{'oH} <it> {bIH} <they, them>
{'e'} <that>
{net} <that>
The pronoun {chaH} is used when it refers to a group of
beings capable of using language; otherwise, {bIH} is used.
Note the relationship between ghaH and chaH being things that can use language and 'oH and bIH as things.
Thus, again, the ship is referred to as it.
Moving to Star Trek V (that many of us would rather forget), there is an extensive body of text that is available at klingonska which is a collection of Okrandian (Marc Okrand is the creator of Klingon) canonic material. For this, Description of the Klingon dialog of <Star Trek V: The Final Frontier>, as prepared for the actors by Marc Okrand.
In this you will see:
Klaa
Enterprise? That's Kirk's ship.
{'en-tep-ray'-'a'. qIrq Duj 'oH}
qIrq is Kirk, in Klingon (pronounce it out - it is a phonetic translation). And again, we se Duj and 'oH.
I will point out:
Scene 146
Klaa
Track her course!
{He-Daj yI-qIm}
Which can be seen in
He is «course»
-Daj is a possessive suffix that has no gender. While the text is indeed referring to the ship, and it was shown to the viewer as 'her', the suffix is genderless (and doesn't care about language either).
yI- is the imperative prefix.
qIm is the verb for «pay attention»
The canonicity of the the Klingon Dictionary has been pondered about. The first thing to realize is that when dealing with Klingon speaking fanbase, canonicity is a very important subject - you just can't make up words. There is a section about it on Wikipedia - Klingon language - Canon about what works are considered canon. The Klingon Dictionary was actually tweaked because of some publishing delays to agree with movie canon. This is described in an interview with Marc Okrand
Okrand: The book was originally supposed to come out at the same time Star Trek III came out, but it was delayed for reasons that are actually interesting and that I should have written down, but now I mostly forget. After I had finished it, and while nothing was happening with getting it published, the film went into postproduction. During postproduction, they changed some lines that were originally in English into Klingon, so we did something like we did with the Vulcan for Star Trek II, except I had to make it sound like the Klingon in the rest of the film, both in terms of sounds and grammar. I didn’t have the relative freedom I’d had with Vulcan. They also changed a couple of subtitles, so a Klingon line that had originally meant one thing suddenly meant something else. This, of course, meant that, in some cases, the dictionary no longer matched the film or lacked some words that were in the film. Because of the delay in publication, however, I was able to make changes to the dictionary so that all of the changes made in postproduction were incorporated into the book.
The published works match the movie canon. Furthermore, the movie canon adhered to the book canon.
But by the time of Star Trek V, the book had been published, so I could no longer fudge. This made the creation of dialogue for Star Trek V actually harder than it was for Star Trek III. It’s harder to follow rules than to make them up. ...
And was adjusted to match the movie:
... Actually, one of the actors did misspeak a line in Star Trek V in a scene that was too complex to reshoot. After Star Trek VI came out, the dictionary was reissued with an addendum to incorporate material created after Star Trek III. I figured out a way for the muffed line to make sense and match the subtitle and included that in the revised book. So the line in Star Trek V is correct after all.
