Re: japanese.
Rob Zook 
Sat, 07 Mar 1998 12:07:15 -0600

At 02:48 PM 3/6/98 PST, Sorik of Vulcan wrote:
>Rob, you had some objections to the dictionary that is on Nibblink's 
>page because of some similarities to Japanese.  I have viewed your 
>creation of Modern Vulcan Writing, and see a lot of similarities to 
>Japanese.  For example, i see the Japanese character known as "te", and 
>see many symbols that closely resemble the character known as "wa".  

Yup, no doubt there is a great deal of similarity between the letters
I chose and many forms of writing. I had a specific idea in mind of how
i wanted the finished product to look, being human I have bounds on my
imaginaion like anyone else.

However, only 2 out of about fifty letters resembled anything in either
Japanese kana. Most of them resemble older systems of writing - like 
Hieratic, Phonecian and Aramaic. Simply because those systems also use 
graceful curving letters with lots of curls and stems.

As far as my "having" the Japanese characters in my writing, that's a
product of your imagination I'm afraid - at least as far as "te" and
"wa" go. I see some similarities, but not the exact forms.

I chose the symbols I did because each of them can be written with
one flowing stroke. Most of the Japanese symbols in both the
katakana and the hiragana require at least two stokes, usually much 
more. "Te" definately requires two strokes and none of my letters look 
exactly like it. One can do "wa' with only one stroke, but it's rather 
awkward that way. 

My /p/, /b/, /wh/, /m/ and /whl/ all have the same horizontal bar that 
"wa" starts with. However, all but /p/ have totally different vertical 
stems. None of those letters have the additional downstoke off the 
horizontal bar that "wa" has. So it's quite as stretch to say any of my 
letters "are" pe or wa.

>I see only one small thing wrong with that, and that is that the Vulcan 
>language should sound and look more alien than other human forms of 
>writing and speaking.

Exacly why I dislike the "vulcan" on Nibblink's page. It has exactly
the same phonology as Japanese - exactly. Every word not contributed
has the same CV syllable structure. It also has a great number of the
same gramatical structures as Japanese. I wanted to give you some
examples but his page appears to be down at the moment.

The Zvelebil creation has some superficial resembelance to Tamul,
phonetically. But appears to have a major different in it's overall 
phonolgy and morphology than Tamul. It has a uniqueness that Nibblink's
stuff does not have.

Furthermore, Prof. Zvelebil the co-creator is a Professor of Linguistics
and from what I've seen quite talented in that area. I think the
uniqueness of the Zvelebil's creation owes a great deal to that fact.

Rob Z.