Re: VL - Vulcan in Vulcan
Adam Ophir Shapira 
Tue, 21 Oct 1997 22:13:24 +0100

At 10:22 AM -0500 10/21/97, Saul Epstein wrote:

>Exactly. In English we have "earth," which overlaps "soil" and "land;" we
>have "planet," borrowed from Greek, which didn't orignally apply to THIS
>planet; we have "world," which overlaps with "universe;" we have the still
>rare "Terra," borrowed from Latin; we have new coinages like "ecosphere," to
>describe that part of the planet participating in ecology.
>
>Perhaps "w~l'q'n," if there is such a word, refers to all the planets
>settled by Vulcans, and originally meant something like "neighborhood." But
>there might still be a district on the home planet called "w~l'q'n," dating
>from the time when that area was the "neighborhood" of the dialect or
>language responsible for the word. And it could be that particular word
>designated a kind of relationship between people for which no word was
>available in other languages, so that it became the word for "Vulcans" in
>general, as opposed to members of a particular House. The possibilities are
>endless.

In other words, you're suggesting that there could be several Vulcan
words for planet Vulcan, and "w~l'q'n" could be *just one* of them?

I guess that may be so ... but then the question now becomes ... was
that really one of the ancient words for Vulcan ... or was it another
word added to the language after contact with Humans, Terrans,
Earthers, Earthlings (or whatever the many names for thie local
species are).

BTW: I suppose that one reason many Vulcans prefer to refer to
people from this planet as "Terrans" because referring to us as
"Humans" might imply that all others are unhuman. But I'll stop
dwelling on this issue since it's a tad off-topic.

By "Earth", I'm reffering from the third planet around the Sun,
also known as Sol, Helios, Soleil, Shemesh, and so forth.