Golic Vulcan

Golic Vulcan is one of the constructed languages of the Vulcan race from the science fiction series Star Trek. It was carefully crafted over many years by Mark R. Gardner and other collaborators in the Vulcan Language Institute, which has been defunct since the latter half of 2008. The core features of the language including the phonology, syntax and the basis for the morphology are creative extrapolations from the Vulcan language dialog heard in the feature films. As of June of 2011, the language has no official relationship to the Star Trek franchise but used in fan-fiction and other artistic projects.

Notable features of the language

Lexicon of 12,000+ terms VSO Pro-drop and contextually omitted copula Pervasive compounding in nouns Standard and short/flat vowel contrasts are traditionally common but not sharply distinguished in all cases in modern speech. Long vowels also exist (cf: maat), but are far less common. Enclitic adverbial prefixes and prepositions Unusual onset consonant clusters (cf: psth-, fn-, tv-)

Like the language itself, the 3 non-Roman writing systems presented here were inspired by Vulcan writing-related imagery that has appeared over the entire history of the series on screen. Specifically, the script referred to as Traditional Calligraphy is inspired by the graphic design of Michael Okuda. The Standard Script derives from the costume work by Robert Fletcher. All of the work to turn this visual imagery into functional alphabets has been done by Britton Watkins of korsaya.org.

Notable features of the orthography

Alphabetic (from logographic roots) Visually modeled on canonical sources from the big and small screen Direction of writing: flexible but most traditionally rendered top to bottom. When written horizontally the traditional calligraphy is simply rotated and flows in the same direction of the predominate concurrent system. With English it reads left to right. (See example at the beginning of this article.) With Hebrew it would read right to left. The Standard script can rotate in the same manner if necessary in context. Horizontal Handwriting involves two different placement models for the vowels; inline and diacritic. In vertical handwriting, vowels are used more or less as inline letters with the exception of the /a/. It behaves somewhat like an abugida vowel diacritic.

Letterforms are invariable, but conjoined within words. The Traditional Calligraphy supports approximately 60 consonant clusters with unique ligatures, most of which occur only at syllable onset. Used to write: Primarily Golic Vulcan, though other Vulcan languages and loans from other languages can also be rendered in all of the script variations. No regular capitalization, but proper nouns are commonly marked with an ahm-glat (name-sign) signifying the common/proper distinction.

The Golic Vulcan alphabets

In the following table the Standard Script (Gotavlu-zukitaun) letters appear to the left of the Traditional Calligraphy (Vanu-tanaf-kitaun) letters (nuhm) and the Handwriting (Elru-Kitaun) variations appear in turn at the right in each cluster. The traditional name of the Standard Script letter is given along with the IPA for each sound. Note that for the Traditional and Handwriting scripts it is most common to simply refer to the consonants as C+/o/, hence "M" is "Mo". "N" is "No", etc. Exceptions occur for "oNG" and the consonant clusters "KSo" vs. "oKS" ("X"). The names in o are omitted in the table for the sake of visual simplicity. The traditional names represent the fact that these letters are in most cases unmodified logographic glyphs from a more ancient system. Compare the historic usage of Egyptian hieroglyphs to write proper names or the manyo-gana of pre-syllabary Japanese.

Inventory of Glyphs (Vis t'Ek'zuntra)

Consonants (Ikastarzun)

Vowels (Ikatu'azun)

Sample texts

A recording of this text by Britton Watkins

Translation
All sentient populace of the universe are born free and equal with respect to dignity and rights. They are capable of possessing logic and ethical principals and should act each toward the other in a manner of universal equality. (A version of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Vulcan Handwriting Elru-Kitaun

Very few non-Vulcans are familiar with Vulcan handwriting. It is one of the first things taught to Vulcan children in their formal education, but other than the context of private contemplation, there is very little need to write by hand in modern Vulcan society. Nevertheless, most children learn via this model paragraph. It is specifically designed to contain all of the letters in common usage even the very rare long vowels II, UU, OO, EE, AA. Most words that use these sounds are archaic or even virtually obsolete. This is certainly the case in modern Vulcan society because many of them refer to preSurakian concepts. The model text reads:

Every sehlat at the tips of its paws, has sharply honed claws which are long and full of danger. But, surprisingly, they may also be found like forgotten icons or symbols of lost fury in darkened caves or corners then remaining only like a wizards magic trick that can bewitch simply because it is so mysterious and as rare as a quest on horseback for

Ma kanok-sehlat-ves nas-spahk fium taush-elru ik wu eh tehvar-bosh. Ki akwikmung isha kup tal-tor veh uyen-uus il utsetsebihk tpaki-kiit svimugeltauk il teruk ish-wak goh hafau uzaipos-hehni tooch ik kup saseestau veling faiei ni del-ri-bosh heh vah riwehat vah ta fi-dzhareling pstha tchef tmazhiv abrusvitan tmasutra. Rikthinoi abrashau

a dust devil over the middle of the ocean. nish pusadakh-wun ik ri ishetau guhsh. Vaash-daEschewing waste take up that ejected weapon that tor nbuk kkadvin uraul nasha-vikitaya tomaat it not become refuse. Refashion its destiny dor-yehat vaksuring kektun. commissioned as a tool for your own inscription of your honored clan name beautifully and with the utmost care.

If the content of the model paragraph seems strange, realize that the pens (specifically the inked nibs) traditionally used to write on paper-like materials were fashioned from sehlat claws which the animals shed from time to time. Technically the shed portion is only an exterior casing of the main claw, but they have the appearance of full talons. These claw husks have hollow interiors providing a reservoir for the ink into which they are dipped. For the ink to flow properly the tip must be clipped at a precise angle and properly burnished. Compare the bird feather quills of Terra. With the exception of the vowel I, which is occasionally written inverted upside-down and backwards in order to maintain a better overall fluidity of balance and legibility, all of the letters have only one basic form. Vowels, with the exception of A in vertical writing tend to occur in the center of an imaginary vertical axis (plat). A is often written slightly to the right of vertical strokes in consonants. However, when preceding certain letters (such as Ko and Mo) it does fall much further to the left. This table shows the high variability of its typical positioning:

As glyphs have simplified over time the letter (nuhm) for SHo as grown to look very similar to the two-letter combination of O + So (OS). Historically there is no relationship between this upper region of SHo and O, but nevertheless they look very similar today. Many Vulcan teachers are actually fond of this similarity because it gives them an opportunity to teach students to pay very close attention to subtle details. However, there is also a standard convention of optionally writing OS with the O riding on a standard carrier. This provides a clear visual distinction and avoids any ambiguity.

These so-called carriers also come into play heavily when writing prepostions that end in vowel + glottal stop (: xI xU xO E xA). Common examples:

You will see that the carrier is basically the same form as the shala-ralash (glottal stop ), so effectively two small circles occur together. Technically the first is physically connected to its vowel. The 2nd is separated both from the first and typically from the following letter by a small bit of space. The other scenario in vertical Vulcan writing by hand in which vowel carriers and other vowel variations come importantly into play is common little words. Note that on the word ni below, there is no carrier, the vowel, I, is simply in its upside down variant.

This chart shows the full inventory of all standard handwriting glyphs in the traditional order (Mo, No, oNG, Po, Bo, Fo, Vo, To, Do, Lo, Ro, So, Zo, Tho, SHo, ZHo, TSo, CHo, TCHo, DZHo (Jo), Ko, Go, KHo, Ho, oo, Yo, Wo, I, IH, II, U, UH, UU, O, OH, OO, OI, E, EH, EE, EI, A, AH, AA, AI, AU) and in the style of neshuk-fek tsehlat-spahk (sehlat claw pen). They are followed by the numerals 0~9 in the same style.

This example shows the two sentences Stonn killed the le-matya with an antler that he found in the sand after the animal bit his kneecap. It was mid-afternoon. It is then followed by the numerals 0~9.

It is very easy to see that this type of script bears no design relationship to ceremonial calligraphy. The same text appears in both formats below. They are from two completely different traditions. However, they share the tendency to be more often written vertically than horizontally.

The handwriting glyphs originate from the same traditional system that is sometimes represented on ancient Vulcan dice. But, there is no obvious one to one correlation visually between the two due to the fact that the letters have undergone extensive simplification over time. Stylistically, these letterforms are somewhat similar to the standard script, but do not mimic them directly.

This type of handwriting also appears horizontally and unlike traditional calligraphy does not rotate its glyphs when that occurs. They are simply positioned side by side with spaces between words. However, there are two major stylistic variations regarding the method of writing the vowels. In the most common style, vowels are written as superscript diacritics above the consonants. This is similar to some Indic abugida systems on Terra. The main reason for this is spacial efficiency. Compare the horizontal text above and below this paragraph to see that the preceding style requires less horizontal space than the one that follows. In the independent vowel model, each vocalic glyph rides on a carrier in a similar fashion to Korean syllables that begin with a silent ng.

If having two different systems for horizontal handwriting seems illogical, quite the opposite is true. Vulcan children are taught that logic is not merely some universal correct answer to a question, but rather the concept or discipline of processing the information at hand to make an optimally informed choice. When writing horizontally one must choose the style which is most logical for the immediate task. One must choose overall efficiency over clean, linear simplicity. The correct answer lies only in the mind of the maker of the choice.