Re: Vulcan Writing Analysis
Rob Zook 
Sun, 06 Sep 1998 12:38:22 -0500

At 06:17 PM 9/6/98 -0700, Mark Gardner wrote:
>
>I think that Rob Zook has done some exciting work with the subject of
>Vulcan writing and characters!  Our group decided  years ago to "take a
>pass" indefinitely on the issue of Vulcan characters or pictographs, 
>since we planned to focus on the "latinized" or transliterated version 
>of the language for ease of research, writing, reading, display and 
>printing.
>Eventually we hoped to return to this issue when we produced more 
>detailed language lessons.  I did create an entire Vulcan alphabet in 
>the "Media Script", a simplified style based on the characters seen on 
>the ceremonial robes, back in 1985 on my old Commodore 64 computer.  If 
>type creation programs did not cost so much, I would have probably done 
>several Vulcan alphabets in TrueType format by now.

Well, I encourage you do download a shareware program called "Softy".
It's an ok TrueType font editor. It's fairly easy to use, and it's
almost free.


>We did think that the symbols on the robes of Sarek and Spock are 
>probably an ancient way of spelling out something like "House of Surak" 
>or even perhaps "The Third Line of the First House of Surak" (count the 
>"pips")!
>It is possible that the "pips" are diacritical marks, but we think that
>they are either numbers or "vowel" marks with the larger characters being
>"consonants" or abbreviated words.  

Possible, I was thinking that the symbols represented a syllabic writing
system, with diacritics to indicate a vowel attribute other than the 
base. I like that simply because it is different enough from most earth
writing (natural and created) to feel unusual and alien.


>It is possible it just spells 
>"Surak", being a representation of his signet.  I have always been 
>fascinated with the way the Ancient Egyptians put important names in a 
>cartouche and used it as a personal seal.  Perhaps this is a Vulcan 
>counterpart to that kind of practice.  I don't know.  We agree that the 
>Vulcan we've been exposed to in the media started out as a pictographic 
>language, when you see how ornate their symbols are.  Since Vulcan 
>obviously had/has other languages from a number of linguistic family 
>trees, it is likely that they have had many examples of writing using 
>cuneiform, rune, alphabetic, pictographic, phonetic, etc., over the 
>millennia.  The writing that Rob showed could be two different things 
>completely and maybe you can't correlate the "staff writing" with the 
>"calligraphic writing".

Also, possible, and I'm not saying they are necessarily related. Granted
the planet must have a multitude of cultures with accompanying languages
and writing styles, I just noticed that some of the characters resembled
the general style of the "staff writing", and thought the style on 
various Vulcan's clothing might be either extremely simplified versions
of the "staff writing" or descended from the "staff writing". I think
the latter seems most likely, if they are related at all.

Given all that, I have made a mistake it seems relying on that graphic
that I called surakchop,jpg. After watching the movies again, I realized
that it looks nothing like the symbols on Spock's and Sarek's robes. I
also noticed that the symbols on Spock's robes were different from the
symbols on Sarek's robes. The top symbol for instance is reversed between
the two. I have yet to find a good photograph showing the bottom symbol
on Sarek's robe, so I'm not sure how different they are yet. So those
might be more personal "chops" rather than a house chop. Or it could be
a production error when they designed Sarek's costume in the later
movies/episodes.

I also found that ST:III seemed to have the richest setting for vulcan
symbols. The various priestesses/and priests have interesting symbols
all over their clothing. Probably, not modern writing, some or all of 
them may not represent writing at all. Could be religious glyphs.

I also noticed that in ST:I, each of the "Vulcan masters" had 2-3
symbols on their robe. One of the robes had symbols that were on a 
par with the symbols on Spock's and Sarek's robes, but organized 
differently. Will try to do scanning and more pics later this week.

However, if any of you have contacts which could get a hold of costume
check photos from the movies or episodes, I'd really appreciate it if 
you'd contact me. There are a few costume check photos in _The Art of
Star Trek_, but I'd rather have a more complete set.


Rob Z.