#vulcan language

I'M SO FUCKING PROUD OF THIS ONE

Okay so — this is a quote from @purple-iris's beautiful, heart-wrenching story "Itsil’sar - Death chant: ritual chant for the dead". It reads "dungi tev-tor nash-veh t’du ko-fu, sa-mekh", or, in English, "I will die your daughter, father". I really, really recommend you give it a read if you like angst. I was on the verge of tears the whole time.

The Vulcan language is, to use a technical linguistic term, clunky as hell. 

If you've used it at all, you've probably noticed. The pronouns are a nightmare; verbs are simplistic and not all forms are given; everything’s a compound even if it has no business being; and a lot of words we need simply don’t exist. The creation of the language began as gibberish made up to fit how the actors’ mouths were already moving and it shows.

So I've been going through extant Vulcan phrases, looking for alternatives. You see, Vulcan was created grammatically after many Vulcan phrases were canonical, meaning not all phrases fit with the grammar we're given. You’ll see this in formalized phrases from ceremonies or as part of etiquette—stuff that simply doesn’t translate according to the rules we have.

I explain this by saying those phrases use an archaic or regional dialect. The stuff Vulcans are willing to share with us makes up the VLD and the grammar lessons. That doesn’t mean that’s how they actually talk. They very well might often use archaic or regional terms they don’t consider part of the standardized form of the language. 

This is especially true when, for instance, Spock breaks into Vulcan at a time of intense feeling. He isn’t going to speak in proper Vulcan he learned in school: he may well pull from the language of poets or from secret Vulcan profanity they won’t put in the dictionary.

I could go further and say: the Surakian linguistic reform that attempted to standardize the language and regularize forms in use (which can explain the over-simplicity of the grammar and general lack of irregular verbs) never took hold as well as they pretend it did. How Vulcans actually speak is much messier. Uhura probably goes on regular rants about this.

As a person who is trying to use Vulcan rather than simply analyze it, I’ve given myself permission to make some of my own changes. However, I don’t currently feel comfortable just making things up. This language is in use by a lot of people and any creations I invent will be incomprehensible to any other Vulcan language user. Thus I mine the corpus of existing Vulcan for forms I might use in novel ways to make the language easier and more graceful.

So, here we go: I’m going to slice and dice the Vulcan language looking for useful grammar, thus angering everyone who already uses the language and being completely irrelevant to anybody who doesn’t. But maybe there are five people out there who will find this stuff interesting or even useful.

<<< START COMIC || << START CH 2 | < Page 18 | Page 19 | Page 20 >

<<< START COMIC || << START CH 2 | < Page 18 | Page 19 | Page 20 >

Ah! Nice to meet you, Nurse Aerin! (Finally!! I wanted to formally introduce him back in Chapter 1, but there wasn't really a place to do it that made sense for the narrative! I'm glad I finally got to do it now!) Huh... Wonder what he saw on that tricorder that got him so worried?

Oh... Hmm. It looks like Mr. Savrek's daughter (Nurse La'Qel) and Counsellor Mirelle... don't really get along. Interesting. Also. I like how Mirelle is using gendered language for V'Serik, but Savrek isn't. Cute little quirk of her being a human who speaks a gendered language I guess! Vulcan Has a genderless 3sg.animate pronoun though.

ALSO. Ben. is TIRED. OF BURYING HIS EMOTIONS. HOW MANY TIMES ARE WE GONNA HAVE TO ALMOST DIE BEFORE WE START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS SHIT (oof. Me too, buddy. Can we tell. That I MAYBE... haven't fully processed how the Pandemic affected me... and that This? is. Mayhaps. a Way. I am doing that.)

A few notes for the language nerds: I mainly studied sociolinguistics and dialectology, so the Vulcan spellings I use here are meant to capture pronunciations used in the dialect of Vulcan that's spoken aboard the Wordsworth more than they are meant to follow the specific spelling conventions laid out in the language learning materials from the VLI website. Also! I've added a few specific constructions and morphosyntactic strategies to this particular dialect - they use case marking and word order strategies to get across who/what is the subject, direct object, indirect object, instrument ...etc.; and this dialect allows speakers to append adverbs and helping verbs to a nucleal verb to create complex verbal phrases (which, in the context of this story, is kind of an old-timey way to speak). If anyone is interested in hearing me go into depth about the morphosyntactic specifics of the particular utterances on this page, let me know!

An update on the artist: My procedure. is This Friday. Wheeeeee (NOT wheee.) Wish me luck!

Thanks to you all for your patience and support!

Shoutout to @darthlenaplant, @soldhissoulforrocknroll, @rain-shoshana, @pinetreelady, and @shifty-as-a-swinging-trapeze for encouraging these shenanigans, and thanks so much to everyone who's been reblogging the pages!! (Let me know if you'd like me to add you to the shoutout so you'll be notified when I update!) You can also bookmark the story on Ao3! The Comic updates every other Tuesday (Patreon, Tumblr, & Ao3)!

Background lore/teaser post (See where it all started) Chapter 2 Cover Page (Go here to read chapter summary / jump to any page) Cover Page (Go here to read comic summary / jump to any page)