tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Dec 26 09:25:02 1997

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vulqangan Hol DaHaDrup'a'?

: Hmm... does anyone here speak Vulcan?  What's the original of this?  Is it
: a good translation, or a loose one, such as the phrase "Surrender or die!"?
: 
: qoror

I wrote:

>"Mene sakkhet ur-seveh."  
>I have no idea how this literally translates nor where it comes from (one
of the pro novels >perhaps?). Anyone have a copy of Marketa Zvelebil's
Vulcan language materials?

qoror piqued my curiosity so I decided to do some more digging. "Mene
sakkhet ur-seveh" is from Diane Duane's novel _Spock's World_ (though I seem
to recall it being around Trek fandom a lot longer). Searching the Web for
Marketa's Vulcan materials, I found her "Live long and prosper" page which
lists the original Vulcan phrase as well as translations into many other
languages (including Klingon {yIn nI' yISIQ 'ej yIchep} as translated by
Okrand for the Radio Times):

http://www.ludwig.ucl.ac.uk/st/StarTrek/Vulcan/llp.html

Marketa and her father (?) have come up with a linguistic analysis of Vulcan
based on all the available bits from the episodes and movies which they then
used to flesh out the language. They have apparently sent this material to
Simon & Schuster for possible publication. According to her Vulcan dictionary:

          mene           "life"
          sakkhet        "longevity"
          ur-seveh       "prosperity (not just material - see tesmur)"
          tesmur         "prosper"

The greeting then is literally three abstract nouns: "Life, longevity,
prosperity."

For further details - including some samples of Vulcan literature - see
Marketa's impressive Vulcan page at:

http://www.ludwig.ucl.ac.uk/st/StarTrek/Vulcan/Vulcan.html


Voragh

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