Re: VL: Old Vulcan
Rob Zook 
Thu, 23 Oct 1997 08:47:39 -0500

At 08:51 PM 10/22/97 +0100, Adam wrote:
>I know that to the un-critical eye, this Paramount explanation
>may sould *very* plausible ... but to the critical eye, it does
>not.

No it does not. However, if Paramount says it, that means it's
canon. So if we want our construction to at least fit in with
the canon view of things we should take it into consideration.

>Different alien cultures may have differences in the way they
>write ... but one thing they would have in common. They would
>all want their writing system to be correspondent to speach.

Actually writing systems do not have to have anything to do with
how the words sound - if that's what you mean by speach. Look 
at English written system for example. At least three sets of rules
of spelling hodge-podged together making it look totally 
inconsistant. Certainly not isomoporphic to the way english sounds.
Like thru, and through, or different rules for the same spoken 
phonomes so the written language can distinguish between words 
which sound the same but find different use in different contexts.

>To have a writing system based on musical scales would only make
>sense if you're spoken language is a musical one. Humans have a
>written language of musical scales (as a matter of fact, more than
>one, but there is one writing system that is pretty much intercultural
>nowadays for writing Terran music). However, the Terran musical system
>of writing is used only to write music, NOT speech.

Not necessarily. I was thinking about this since Patrick mentioned
this. You can create an artificial coorespondance between damn
near anything. 

>Furthermore, there is the issue of how could there have been
>a such thing as "Old Vulcan" language in the first place? I
>made IMHO a very strong and logical argument to believe that
>there is more than one Vulcan language ... however, there would
>be one language (very possibly Surak's native language, though
>*not necessarily* so) which would be accepted as the language
>for all planet-wide business on Vulcan. Post-reformation Vulcans
>would find it logical for all of them to accept one language as
>the global language (even if many of them have to learn it as a
>foreign language).
<snip>

This situation probably represents a certain short-sightedness
and lack of consistancy Star Trek has shown since Paramount 
took over the franchise (although technically, I guess they
bought out Desilu before the franchise existed as such).

Expecting the kind of background which would take a Tolkien
to create from anyone at Paramount (except for maybe Okrand)
seems rather unrealistic. I agree they should work all these
details out and make every part of the universe consistant
with every other part - but as I've said before if the question
starts with "why don't they..." then the answer is always
"money". Time "is" money they say, and would require a
signifigant investment on Paramounts time.

In our construction though, I see no reason why we cannot 
work a little backwards and come up with some background.
Do a little creative etymology as it were.

Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that
he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny 
the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
-- Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky