Re: some questions
Rob Zook 
Mon, 02 Mar 1998 22:40:17 -0600

At 06:37 PM 3/2/98 PST, Surak of Vulcan wrote:
>I am not a language expert, so I will never claim to know that much 
>about the intricuit details of any language, but I believe I have an 
>insight into symantics that ma be helpful.
>
>Some questions:
>
>Is the Vulcan language officially called Yakana?  Has anyone even heard 
>of this before?  The reason I ask is because of a web site created by 
>Steve Nibblink (sp?).  He has the only Vulcan dictionary (that he and I 
>have seen or know of) on the web.  There are at least a couple hundred 
>words in this collection.  Some of the words were created by eager 
>contributors which derived such rediculous words as m'cdonl'd = dinner, 
>wt'wht'r = deciet, and som others like m'lgibs'n = lethal, or something 
>like that.  Forgive me if the creator of these words is on this list.

I think some of us have seen it, at least I have. It has a direct 
copy of the japanese style of phonetic constraints, which I though
showed a lack of imagination on the author's part. I prefer the Zvelebil
construction of the two I've seen, it looks very well constucted and 
disimilar enough from other human languages I seen to sound "alien"
enough.

It also has a dictionary, which includes all of the canon Trek
Vulcan we've seen (except for most of the movie Vulcan, only a couple
of words from ST:II).

>Is one of the functions of this list to expand the vocabulary of Vulcan?  
>If so, consider that because rokase means literally, medicine place, or 
>hospital, that roratoq means paper place, or folder.

I have a program that I almost have finished (I just rewrote the
random Number generator to hopefully give more random results). It will
generate words having the same phonetic constraints as the Zvelebil
Vulcan. For now, Marketa Zvelebil has sole control of what words become
official.

>There is a link to Steve's page at my site if anyone wants to survey it.

Been there done that, was not impressed, I'm afraid. With the language
that is, I liked Steve's web page ok.

>Q:  If I want to say, "Your friend Surak"
> do I say it like  "S'at t'hyla Surak"?

Or, I believe, simply S't'hyla Surak (the possessiveness is evidently
assumed in this case).

Rob Z.