Re: Submitted for your approval... 
Steven Boozer 
Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:17:17 -0500 (CDT)

: "Saul Epstein" writes:
: 
: > The transcription here is entirely lower-case for now, though for
: > slightly different reasons than in the case of Klingon. Rather than
: > employ upper-case letters to express special sound distinctions, VALD
: > has adapted some letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet
: > which have no upper-case counterparts. In the future, we will either
: > devise some upper-case forms for these, or switch to an actual Vulcan
: > script.
: 
: Let me ask a somewhat unrelated question, probably reflecting my
: lack of linguistics education: why do letter case differences (need
: to) exist? Is it the circumstance of working within the confines
: of an alphabet, as opposed to a more pictorical form of language
: representation?
: 
: Randall Raemon

Why use IPA symbols at all in the finished product, the language the fans
will be using, assuming it is intended for those off this list and not being
developed just as a linguists' toy language?  I understand IPA's utility in
phonetic discussions - those "how does Marketa (or Diane Duane, for that
matter) pronounce this word?" questions - but that's where this specialist
orthography should remain.  Marketa didn't use them in the original ZC, and
this is, after all, the language all of us here were impressed by and wanted
to develop.  I have noticed she rewrote the IPA phonetic transcriptions of
the first batch of generated vocabulary items submitted for her approval.
It is, after all, her and her father's language.  I think it is an advantage
that she approve the finished product so as to keep a consistent "feel" to
it.  Without that, the language will be pulled in several directions and
become one of those ugly written-by-committee monstrosities.

Personally, I think Marketa's spelling is elegant, not to mention it's
probably the version of Vulcan that's best known to Vulcan fandom.  The SC
has been available for some time now on the Internet.  It's also basically
compatible with Diane Duane's similar spellings of her version of Vulcan
which, by virtue of being published in Paramount-authorized novels by a
mainstream press, is also widely disseminated. 

Another consideration is that the IPA transcriptions are only familiar to
trained linguists, particularly the ASCII version of IPA we're forced to use
in emails and newsgroups.  The diacritics can only by reproduced if everyone
has the same software and a powerful enough computer with a graphics card.
Many of us cannot afford this hardware.  And let's face it, Marketa's Vulcan
will initially be used extensively on the Net in mailing lists such as this
and vulcan-l, the various Trek newsgroups, or in fan fiction (which is
largely Net based nowadays). Non-linguists (and poor typists) will
constantly make mistakes when trying to use this confusing and awkward
orthography.  

And - finally I get to the topic of Saul's post! - Marketa's spelling will
accomodate capitalization of proper nouns and the first words in sentences,
all of which are a definite aid in reading a language written in the Roman
alphabet.  These improvements shouldn't be arbitrarily discarded.  It's why
capitalization, not to mention punctuation and spaces between words, was
adopted gradually in the Middle Ages.
latinwasjusttoobloodyhardtoreadwithoutthem   Let me tell you, I've been
studying tlhIngan Hol for over seven years now and although I'm fairly
fluent and in complete command of all the source material ("canon" we call
it in the Klingon Language Institute), I still wish Marc Okrand hadn't
inflicted his peculiar phonetic spelling on the fans, with upper case
letters reserved exclusively for specifically Klingon phonemes.  His
spelling is constantly being screwed up by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books,
not to mention the subtitles and closed captions in the movies and TV
episodes, which leads to all sorts of unnecessary added confusion.  All of
which a good system should prevent.

Assuming of course that work on the language will ever actually be finished.
BTW, just what is the VALD name for the Vulcan language anyway?

Well, that's my two cents worth--or should I say, {th'at ra' srikhet}?


 
_____________________________________________________________________
Steven Boozer   University of Chicago Library   s-boozer*uchicago,edu