Real vulcan Script?

[Tribble puncher]

A friend and I were discussing Star Trek Tattoo's and were designing some "what if" ones, one of them had some Vulcan script like this: http://www.fontriver.com/i/fonts/vulcan_script/vulcan_script_specimen.jpg

I guess that's the script as used in Enterprise....However then there is This: http://i.fonts2u.com/mo/mp1_modern-vulcan-11_1.png

Which I believe is used in the movies (most Star Trek:TMP, I think.) anyway, is there an official stance on which one is the "official" one? Thanks

 

[137th Gebirg]

I would say both.

Earth has countless languages, alphabets and dialects. Who's to say one isn't "ancient Vulcan" for ceremonial robes and other traditions and rituals and the other isn't "modern Vulcan" for every-day use? If they were both on-screen, they would both be considered canonical and "official".

Same thing for the various Klingon characters and alphabets we've seen on-screen over the years. Like, what the hell is a "Klingon Nullification Glyph"?

 

[uniderth]

What IS a Klingon Nullification Glyph?

 

[Arpy]

You can see yet another Vulcan script on the Vulcan shuttle from TMP.

As Gebirg said, there are many different fonts and languages on Earth: some Middle-Eastern languages like Arabic are read right to left; some Far-Eastern languages like Chinese are read up to down and are each character a word rather than a letter in a word; some like Ancient Egyptian are pictorial. Maybe the producers stumbled ass-backwards by artistic inconsistency to create something more realistic that way.

None of the languages created so far have any kind of individual structure though and are just pretty pictures. If they had to create Vulcan language for a new movie or series, maybe they'd adopt attributes of the ones we've mentioned here, but it'd probably be very different itself.
https://www.google.com/search?q=asi...isch&q=vertical+chinese&imgrc=WW5tasr5LnPRjM:

 

[Kor]

That's "Klingon mummification glyph."

But in the overall Trek universe continuity, we know that by the 24th century, Klingons considered a dead body to just be an empty shell to be disposed of, so they would not have practiced mummification by that point.

Sheesh, I can't believe I know this stuff off the top of my head.

Kor

 

[Arpy]

That's "Klingon mummification glyph."

But in the overall Trek universe continuity, we know that by the 24th century, Klingons considered a dead body to just be an empty shell to be disposed of, so they would not have practiced mummification by that point.

Sheesh, I can't believe I know this stuff off the top of my head.

Kor

Thank you, my lord Dahar Master.

 

[137th Gebirg]

You can see yet another Vulcan script on the Vulcan shuttle from TMP.

As Gebirg said, there are many different fonts and languages on Earth: some Middle-Eastern languages like Arabic are read right to left; some Far-Eastern languages like Chinese are read up to down and are each character a word rather than a letter in a word; some like Ancient Egyptian are pictorial. Maybe the producers stumbled ass-backwards by artistic inconsistency to create something more realistic that way.

None of the languages created so far have any kind of individual structure though and are just pretty pictures. If they had to create Vulcan language for a new movie or series, maybe they'd adopt attributes of the ones we've mentioned here, but it'd probably be very different itself.

I can't remember, was there a fourth variation in Vulcan script in JJ-Trek-09? I vaguely remember something like it before Vulcan got sucked away, either in young Spock's testing bubble or in the elder's cave before the end. Curious if they followed any one particular variant or invented a whole new one.

 

[vulcan redshirt]

It could be just about possible to rationalise the two scripts as being different forms of the same language. If you take how different for example the fonts used for the external names / numbers on Starfleet ships and say, Edwardian Cursive, someone who is not only not familiar with English, but also not native to the Roman Alphabet may not recognise the forms being the same language or script.

Maybe the vertical spiral script is like a cursive form -to me the forms look like words not individual letters, given all the sub parts to them (think Chinese word-symbols or ancient Egyptian cartouches) and the other form of individual characters is the equivalent of block capitals (doesn't Japanese writing work this way, with two alphabets for different things?)

 

[LadyT'Anna]

I would say both.

Earth has countless languages, alphabets and dialects. Who's to say one isn't "ancient Vulcan" for ceremonial robes and other traditions and rituals and the other isn't "modern Vulcan" for every-day use? If they were both on-screen, they would both be considered canonical and "official".

vulcan redshirt wrote:

It could be just about possible to rationalise the two scripts as being different forms of the same language. If you take how different for example the fonts used for the external names / numbers on Starfleet ships and say, Edwardian Cursive, someone who is not only not familiar with English, but also not native to the Roman Alphabet may not recognise the forms being the same language or script.

Maybe the vertical spiral script is like a cursive form -to me the forms look like words not individual letters, given all the sub parts to them (think Chinese word-symbols or ancient Egyptian cartouches) and the other form of individual characters is the equivalent of block capitals (doesn't Japanese writing work this way, with two alphabets for different things?)

I'd be willing to bet that the decorative version of the font is the more formal one, but perhaps that's my Western bias talking.

Incidentally, per Google search, Japanese uses three scripts, not two.

 

[Kor]

Yes, three.
IIRC, Kanji for Sino-Japanese constructions (to put it simply), Hiragana generally for native words and grammatical articles, and Katakana to transcribe foreign words.

Kor

 

[LadyT'Anna]

Yes, three.
IIRC, Kanji for Sino-Japanese constructions (to put it simply), Hiragana generally for native words and grammatical articles, and Katakana to transcribe foreign words.

Kor

Thank you for the clarification, Kor; I appreciate it.