Linguistic Poachers of the Star Trek and Star Wars Story World
10th Annual Language Construction Society
April 2023
Dr Andrew Higgins (asthiggins@me.com)
Caption
NI VAR - Two Forms
Vulcan is an isolating language; no word ever changes its form. Grammatical meaning (as opposed to lexical or dictionary meaning) is expressed by word order and the use of particles…there are two major stages of the language available for study: Modern Vulcan, spoken from the time of the Reform up to the present, and Old Vulcan (or ‘Old Tongue’) from the Vulcan /nah dau/ - dating from the beginning of literate and historic times until the Reform.
The Proposed Structural Sketch of the Vulcan Language
Lt. Dorothy Conway PhD. Federation Star Fleet
“Spock” is in actuality what humans call a given name. The family name is unpronounceable and can only be rendered in Earth alphabet as a long series consonants. With a few decades of practice, it is possible for a human to approximate it, but only a Vulcan can correctly pronounce it…I have projected Spock’s last name as follows: XTMPRSQZNTWLFB. Of course, the formal Vulcan language is not written with English letters. As in Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and so on, the phonetic rendering to pronunciation has nothing to do with the written language.
D.C.Fontana in Spockanalia
When the peoples of the planet known in the Federation as "Vulcan" chose to emphasize logic as the primary motivation, they found it necessary to forge a tool of communication equal to the task. They deemed it insufficient to merely delete all emotion-words, for this would have left a void in the language. They would be unable to argue logically about emotion-concepts. Therefore, they re-evaluated the function of language in society and synthesized a new type of tool to replace it.
- VULCANUR SEMEMICS
The masculine proper name prefix, /:S-/, is related to the prime sememe /-s-/, which also appears in the unit /-sel-/, meaning beauty. Why does this not appear in tokiel and idik? Let us examine the masculine name, Spock.
KRAITH: This word is reserved exclusively to refer to the vessel used in the Ceremony of the Affirmation. The final /-th-/ might better be rendered /-t-/ as it is a strongly aspirated alveolar-dental unvoiced stop that is so close to that it is easily confused with it.
/:K-/ inclusion
/-r-/ passive
/-e-/ generic
/-ee-/ pattern
/-th:/ change
This may be read, "The means whereby change is included in the pattern". The concepts of evolution, cycle, and re-definition are given second-order emphasis in this word. The Vulcan concept of a viable Continuity is one which undergoes orderly, cyclic evolution.
KAH-IF-FARR (alternate spelling, Kari far; suggested spelling Kahree farr): Signifies the beginning of a ceremony. It is generally glossed as "begin the ritual action" from a "literal" meaning of "fulfill the point-in-the-cycle."
/:K-/ logical inclusion
/-ah-/ here, now
/-r-/ command
/-ee-/ pattern
NI VAR (suggested spelling, Nee Vahr): A form in which two (or more) subjects are contrasted and compared. It may take the form of a poem, song, drawing, etc.
/:N-/ time
/-ee-/ pattern
/-v-/ logical exclusion
/-ah-/ now
/-r:/ passive
Somethings group to form a pattern: things which are excluded from the pattern.
Greetings exalted ones. My name is Summer!. :) The Complete Wermo's Guide is a take on The Complete Idiot's Guide series of how-to books. Although I have background in several languages, namely French, German, and a little of this and that, I am by no means a professional linguist, nor do I have any affiliation with those that developed Huttese for Master George. However, I do have a great interest in learning Huttese and aiding others in learning it as well, even if only through a web page. The words on this site are for the most part ALL CANONICAL, meaning they are from OFFICIAL Star Wars sources, I do not make any of the dictionary words up myself, UNLESS AND ALWAYS otherwise noted by me. I hope this guide is in some way useful to those who share my love and admiration of all things Star Wars. Please E-Mail me and tell me how I could add or detract from this guide to make it better. Also, if I have made any errors, a little Jedi wisdom would be appreciated. And of course if you have any Huttese or other Star Wars language related questions I will be glad to be of service to you. As you know, like Threepio, it is a work in progress. Thank you and enjoy!
Ke jorhaa'ir Mando'a!
Yes, it's true. There's a Mandalorian language, Mando'a. I developed it for Lucasfilm and now it's a functioning language that you can learn and speak. I'm not writing any more Star Wars, so I won't be developing the language further or adding to the dictionary as planned, and I'm not dealing with any more queries on it, but there's enough here to keep you busy for years. I'll leave it here as a fan resource indefinitely unless I'm asked to remove it by the copyright owner. The information is"as is" - i.e. the dictionary is the version I wrote for Lucasfilm, and the alphabet is straight from them - so if you don't like something in it, make up some fan on that keeps you happy. It's just background to some fiction, and it really isn't worth getting your panties in a bunch about it. Treat it like real languages - they also evolve daily and spawn different versions.
The Linguistic Adventure Continues!