Re: A Proposal for a Modern Vulcan script
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 30 Oct 1997 17:18:32 -0600

At 02:28 PM 10/30/97 -0600, Rob wrote:

>I have come up with a system which I think would find use as a modern
>"international" kind of Vulcan lettering to match the "international"
>Vulcan that we find in the Zvelebil Corpus. You can take a look at
>it a picture of the letters and suggested phonetic values at:
>
>http://home,unicom,net/~lalaith/startrek/vulcan/vulc_lang/vulcletr,jpg

        [snip]

>Please let me know what you think.

I very much like the way it looks, and I note with interest that by
rendering vowels as comparatively small marks associated with consonants you
leave open the very definite possibility of using a "nagari"-style system
like that used to to write Sanskrit.

Your organization of the sounds is..,interesting? And in some places I can't
read the phonetic value off the graphic. But it may need clarifying that:

1. In addition to /wh/ and /whl/, Vulcan has /w/ a voiced bilabial
approximant/fricative.

2. /kh/ is an aspirated voiceless velar stop that may or may not be phonemic.

3. /x/ is a voiceless velar fricative

4. /y/ is a voiced palatal approximant

5. /rh/ is both described as "retroflex" and compared to a sound which is a
palato-pharyngeal approximant (the Irish/American /r/). This discrepency
needs to be explained.

6. Just to be picky: the unit of phonology is, as far as I know, the
phonEme, as opposed to the phonOme.

Now, in light of (1), above, I wonder if Vulcan should have distinct f AND
wh, v AND w. There might instead be a voiced/voiceless pair of labials which
have bilabial and labio-dental allophones.

On a personal preference note: I would very much like the explicit <'> sign
to look like a "real" consonant, rather than like a diacritic or a piece of
punctuation.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
					-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at