tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 05 01:26:43 1993

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Romulan and Vulcan languages



Since the subject has come up, I will explain a little of what Dave
has been doing the past few months.

Well, the comment that Vulcan is thinly disguised Japanese is quite true,
and many (including me) beat that to death two years ago.  However this
and many of us (including moi) beat this to death two years ago.
(sorry for the weirdly line)

BUT, this refers ONLY to the booklet label "Starfleet Academy Vulcan
Language Guide".  Although I now am a member of Starfleet Internation
al which sponsors a Starfleet Academy, I am not sure if that is the
origin of this text.

THERE IS PLENTY OF OTHER LEGITIMATE VULCAN.
There is the dialogue in ST1, ST2, ST3 and scattered words in the original
series, TNG, and so on.  This is screen Vulcan and could be considered
"canonical".  Also, we have a large collection of Vulcan words appearing
in the literature of all the Bantam and Pocket novels.

What I have done is a big old compilation of terms Vulcan and Romulan.
And the Vulcan list is in the 600 word range (including names--since
supposedly Vulcan names are literal terms, such as our Summer, Daisy,
Leaf, and the late River.  
I have begun to see patterns, and have a rudimentary grammar established
for Vulcan.  One might as well just consider the SFAVLG to be a poor
transliteration done by some Japanese researchers.  By taking this idea
I can see even more patterns develop.  Admittedly, this is a kind
of Rorshach Vulcan, or Dave's own spin on Vulcan, but nonetheless it
is something.
The only other published analyses of Vulcan are contained in the
Best of Trek series--two articles by Katherine Wolterink.  The
problem is her transliterations of the dialogues in the movies
are somewhat incorrect, thus damaging her conclusions in the parsing
of the text.
So this is the state of Vulcan affairs.  Please, though, don't ask me
for copies--I can at least *hope* Pocket would buy this when I'm
done (aka pipius-dream).

As for Romulan, I've communicated with Diane Duane, and I will leave that
story for the next post sometime Monday.

Dave Sturm.
aka The Lost Sheep



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