Re: VL - multiple words
Rob Zook 
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 17:24:40 -0600

At 01:06 PM 10/28/97 -0600, you wrote:
>
>which is said to mean literally "body-attack." "Kunat kali-fee" is
>translated as either "mating" or "challenge," but since "kunat" is 
>"mating," I suspect "kunat kali-fee" is specifically a woman's 
>rejection of her bond-mate at pon farr.

Err..,unless I misunderstood you that does not sound quite right.
As you said, "kunat kali-fee" means literally "mating body-attack", 
but in _Amok Time_, in the context, it appeared this meant the entire 
ritual involved in finalizing a bonding. Which could go either the
bonding ritual (the mating), or the challenge (the body attack).
With torital being one extreme form of the challenge.

Perhaps the word comes from a less than modern dialect without the
rigidly formal logic structure we see in the Zvelebil corpus.
perhaps in Modern Vulcan it would go something like: kunat'aj kalifee'aj.

>>Also, we do need a Vulcan word for 
>>Peace.  Any thoughts?
>
>Well, we have "arivne," (possibly from "arie-vne") meaning "a state of
>unity between matter, energy, and thought;" and "lailara," meaning 
>"harmony." Peace can mean other things, of course, but it is often used 
>to mean just those sorts of things.

Marketa put in the dictionary that ur-seveh means more than just
material prosperity, so perhaps the peace in "peace and long life"
could mean the kind of spiritual harmony implied by arivne.

I think that we could translate mene sak'khet ur-saveh in a different
way. How about as literally "live long and prosper"?

mene     "life, live"
sak'khet "longevtity"
ur-      logical conjunctive partical ("and")
saveh    "spiritual prosperity"

Thus a more ancient perhaps traditionally religious dialect, and
then we can say the corellary as: arivne ur-mene sak'khet. Literally
meaning "spiritual unity and long life", but as metaphoricaly meaning
"peace and long life".

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