A Proposal for a Modern Vulcan script
Rob Zook 
Thu, 30 Oct 1997 14:28:26 -0600

Hi all,

I have always loved fiddling with lettering schemes and such, so I
have been working on a Vulcan lettering system. I feel fairly sure that
the two examples of "lettering" are both fairly old, and not a current
modern usage. The calligraphy in Spock's book of Vulcan wisdom, the
Omnipedia outright calls "ancient". The other example is on Spock and
Sarek's Vulcan robes. They both show the same three chararcters. 

I have come up with a system which I think would find use as a modern
"international" kind of Vulcan lettering to match the "international"
Vulcan that we find in the Zvelebil Corpus. You can take a look at
it a picture of the letters and suggested phonetic values at:

http://home,unicom,net/~lalaith/startrek/vulcan/vulc_lang/vulcletr,jpg

I have also put together a picture of a few Vulcan phrases so you can
see the flow of the script when writing actual Vulcan:

http://home,unicom,net/~lalaith/startrek/vulcan/vulc_lang/vulcwrit,jpg

The consonents and vowels are written with a three line system to
get a similar feel to a blending of arabic, heiratic, and the tengwar.

So writing it involves drawing the letters position in relation to 
three levels within a line of text:

---------------------------------
Upper Stems
---------------------------------
Main Letter Body
---------------------------------
Lower Stems
---------------------------------

Consonents have either an upper, or a lower stem, none or both. Vowels
appear on each of the three levels.

Please let me know what you think.

Also, I have scanned part of a picture out of _The Art of Star Trek_,
which shows some more of the ancient Vulcan calligraphy from Spock's
book. It appears on a bottle label which has evidently been in the
background in Sisko's office a couple of times. From the letters on
the label, it appears the calligraphy in the Omnipedia represents a
highly stylized version of these ancient letters. Which would fit
with the Omnipedia's labelling of it's graphic as ancient Vulcan
_calligraphy_.

http://home,unicom,net/~lalaith/startrek/vulcan/vulc_lang/vulcletters,jpg

Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that
he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny 
the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
-- Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky