Seriously? How is Vulcan grammar THAT bad?

[sevenstars]

One day too late-- how sad is that?

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2732

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Or maybe T'Pau's just bad at English. (In ENT, she was probably speaking through the Universal Translator, but by the time TOS rolls around, she's so anti-human that she won't use it.)

The aliens didn't need universal translators to speak, the humans just needed them to listen.

But the Vulcans would also need it to listen to the *humans* speak, wouldn't they?

So actually learning to speak English, albeit with bad grammar, is less anti-human than simply speaking her native Vulcan and letting it be translated.

OTOH, perhaps T'Pau's prejudice compelled her to put in only a very shallow effort at learning English. Because she didn't care for humans, she didn't bother to work hard enough to learn their language.

 

[Gary7]

I chalk it up to translation mistakes... not their native language. In reality, a script mistake. And Spock "went along with it." Doesn't bother me, though. Star Trek has made plenty of mistakes long the way. But I could see someone in linguistics (or who teaches language) being annoyed by it. It's in their nature.

 

[Pauln6]

I chalk it up to translation mistakes... not their native language. In reality, a script mistake. And Spock "went along with it." Doesn't bother me, though. Star Trek has made plenty of mistakes long the way. But I could see someone in linguistics (or who teaches language) being annoyed by it. It's in their nature.

Translators are not automatically literal. They don't translate foreign swear words, other words that have literal translations, and they don't reinterpret Shakespeare. T'Pau is obviously using an archaic, traditional version of Vulcan and the translator, aware of this, translates into an archaic form of Standard.

I was indeed alluding to Dr Who earlier, since everything said in that show is interpreted by the Tardis, and it still gives the Doctor a varying accent of some kind - it was a great line. I also took a stab a literal translation of Khan's, "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee," in an earlier post.

Overall, don't worry about it.

 

[JustKate]

T'Pau is obviously using an archaic, traditional version of Vulcan and the translator, aware of this, translates into an archaic form of Standard.

Except that it doesn't. The OP's point, which may be getting lost here in all this stuff about translators (or maybe it's just getting lost for me ) is that the grammar used here is incorrect by both 20th century and archaic standards and presumably it would be wrong by 22nd century standards as well. "Thou art" would be archaic but correct; "thee are" is just flat-out wrong, written by somebody who thought all you had to do to make a sentence old-fashioned and formal was throw a "thee" in there. On the bright side at least there aren't, as far as we can tell, any unnecessary E's in there, e.g., olde shoppe.

 

[Pauln6]

T'Pau is obviously using an archaic, traditional version of Vulcan and the translator, aware of this, translates into an archaic form of Standard.

Except that it doesn't. The OP's point, which may be getting lost here in all this stuff about translators (or maybe it's just getting lost for me ) is that the grammar used here is incorrect by both 20th century and archaic standards and presumably it would be wrong by 22nd century standards as well. "Thou art" would be archaic but correct; "thee are" is just flat-out wrong, written by somebody who thought all you had to do to make a sentence old-fashioned and formal was throw a "thee" in there. On the bright side at least there aren't, as far as we can tell, any unnecessary E's in there, e.g., olde shoppe.

The translators make grammatical errors all the time. To boldly go anybody? And do you really think that Shakespeare's grammar was good by modern standards? I don't think it's fair to throw stones at this episode just because the majority of viewers are too ignorant to spot most of the other mistakes.

This is one issue where I have no problem suspending disbelief.

 

[scotpens]

. . . The translators make grammatical errors all the time. To boldly go anybody? And do you really think that Shakespeare's grammar was good by modern standards? I don't think it's fair to throw stones at this episode just because the majority of viewers are too ignorant to spot most of the other mistakes.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive in English. And Shakespeare's grammar was impeccable by the standards of his day or the present day. Only some of his vocabulary and usage is archaic.

 

[JustKate]

. . . The translators make grammatical errors all the time. To boldly go anybody? And do you really think that Shakespeare's grammar was good by modern standards? I don't think it's fair to throw stones at this episode just because the majority of viewers are too ignorant to spot most of the other mistakes.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive in English. And Shakespeare's grammar was impeccable by the standards of his day or the present day. Only some of his vocabulary and usage is archaic.

Exactly - twice, really.

Pauln6, splitting an infinitive is really and truly not on par with "thee are." I realize "thee are" doesn't bother you, and that's fine - I'm not trying to talk you into disliking it. All I'm trying to get at is that (as Nerys Dukat mentioned in her initial post) it is absolutely an error, comparable to something in modern English such as "you is" or "we was." It's absolutely wrong, unlike splitting an infinitive which is not actually an error at all. I know, I know - like many of us, perhaps including you, I had a junior high English teacher who insisted that splitting infinitives was forbidden in decent English, and there are a few people out there who do. But you would be hard-pressed to find any authority (and by that I mean someone more authoritative than me or my former English teacher ) who would consider it an error. Splitting infinitives is fine, and that includes "to boldly go."

BTW, the grammar on all the Treks (well, I don't know about Enterprise since I rarely watched that one) is normally quite good. There are not many errors there, at least not glaring ones. But this one is...glaring. The reason it wasn't obvious to the writers, I'd guess, is that they thought all they had to do was use "thee" instead of "you" and they'd end up with a nice, formal-sounding sentence. And they were wrong.

As I mentioned in my first post, the way I manage to gloss over this annoying little error is to pretend that T'Pau is actually saying "art" instead of "are" but that I just can't hear the "t" on the end of "art" because of the actress's thick accent. Works for me!

 

[sevenstars]

...truly not on par with "thee are."

I think Alienesse actually explained this perfectly in the fifth post of this thread: as odd as this sounds (and it does), this is Quaker speech. If you follow the link I posted above, there's a nice little informal discussion of how these forms may have come about.

As Pauln6 said:

T'Pau is obviously using an archaic, traditional version of Vulcan and the translator, aware of this, translates into an archaic form of Standard.

I imagine this is pretty much what they were going for. But I doubt that their choice of "thee are" forms was entirely due to ignorance. IIRC Quakers got quite a lot of airplay in the fifties and sixties. I've already mentioned "Friendly Persuasion" where these kinds of forms are used; there were other films as well, and also popular children's books like Thee, Hannah.

Here is an example from the film "Angel and the Badman":

Quirt Evans: Who says I pointed a gun?
Penelope Worth: I do.
Quirt Evans: Well, I didn't.
Penelope Worth: Then he gave in more easily than I expected. Thee remember this, Quirt: the Lord moves in mysterious manner at times, using strange methods and odd instruments.

So my guess is, they wanted T'Pau to sound sort of religious/ceremonial/archaic, but not like Jesus. And this is what they came up with. I have to admit, I too found it jarring for the first twenty years or so, but at this point, I can't imagine T'Pau speaking any other way.

 

[FormerLurker]

If you're going to complain about "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee," you have to go piss on Herman Melville's grave, because that's a direct quote from Captain Ahab.

 

[BolianAuthor]

And, as long as we're being silly nitpickers, why is T’Pau the only Vulcan who speaks English with an Austrian accent?

IDK... Is Tuvok the only black Vulcan?

Your comment, serious or not serious as it may be, illustrates a big problem I have with Trek in general... how every alien race has to have ONE ethnicity, and ONE way of speaking... in reality, it wouldn't work that way... various ethnicity and nations would develop variations of their languages, and various accents and dialects would appear, as well as races, just like on Earth. The fact that T'Pau spoke with an accent was something I loved.

 

[Pauln6]

. . . The translators make grammatical errors all the time. To boldly go anybody? And do you really think that Shakespeare's grammar was good by modern standards? I don't think it's fair to throw stones at this episode just because the majority of viewers are too ignorant to spot most of the other mistakes.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive in English. And Shakespeare's grammar was impeccable by the standards of his day or the present day. Only some of his vocabulary and usage is archaic.

Ok, I will have to take your word for his grammar. I thought that spelling and grammar were played fast and loose in those days - although actually, Chaucer is much worse. Although I haven't read a Shakespearian play for over 20 years!

If you're going to complain about "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee," you have to go piss on Herman Melville's grave, because that's a direct quote from Captain Ahab.

Ah of course, I haven't read it but I should have remembered that! Clearly I need to revisit my classics! We're in Darmok territory here, 'Hell' having no relative meaning to many aliens (or many humans for that matter). And, in spite of the context, you aren't physically stabbing - it's a metaphor that could make no sense at all to a species that doesn't use metaphors in its language. What we see on screen is translated for the viewer, not the characters, and it's a bit silly to be too literal until you want Klingons frakking all over the place.

If T'Pau was using a translator, she clearly had it switched to 'Ancient Vulcan Ritual 3', or she was physically speaking Standard using Vulcanisms in her speach patterns in the same way that a German-speaker might incorporate elements of German sentence structure in their language. Thee art might be grammatically correct in Vulcan...

Alternatively, she's frickin' T'Pau, Vulcan leader and too good for the Federation; nobody is brave enough to correct her poor grammar.

 

[scotpens]

. . . the way I manage to gloss over this annoying little error is to pretend that T'Pau is actually saying “art” instead of “are” but that I just can't hear the “t” on the end of “art” because of the actress's thick accent. Works for me!

Except that “thee art” is just as incorrect as “thee are.” The nominative (subjective) case is thou.

Except for those damn Quakers.

If you're going to complain about “From Hell's heart, I stab at thee,” you have to go piss on Herman Melville's grave, because that's a direct quote from Captain Ahab.

So who's complaining? “I stab at thee” is grammatically correct.

If Melville had written, “Thee stabs at me” or “I stab at thou,” that would be grammatically wrong.

 

[Myasishchev]

Me would enjoy reading about Bizarro Ahab.

 

[FormerLurker]

IDK... Is Tuvok the only black Vulcan?

Obviously not. It would take black Vulcans to produce Tuvok. I can't think of any onscreen examples offhand, but there are also black Romulans, as seen in TNG's "Pegasus."

 

[Anwar]

Vulcan is supposed to be a hotter world with much more desert land to it anyways, it makes sense there'd be Vulcans with darker complexions.

The Vulcan midwife who helped birth Spock in TFF was also black.

 

[Ronald Held]

A a high level, why not expect darker skinned Vulcans nearer the equatorial regions and lighter ones at higher latitudes?

 

[Doug Otte]

IDK... Is Tuvok the only black Vulcan?

Obviously not. It would take black Vulcans to produce Tuvok. I can't think of any onscreen examples offhand, but there are also black Romulans, as seen in TNG's "Pegasus."

I believe the first brown-skinned Vulcan we ever saw was in Spock's birth scene from ST V:

Doug

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tffhd/ch10/tffhd1403.jpg

A. Picture was WAYYYYYY too big so I turned it into a link.
B. Taken from Trekcore (hotlinked) and we can't hotlink to places.

Next time, please shrink the picture, save it on your own space and then post it. Thanks! - T'Bonz

 

[Sky]

I never even noticed her.

(Maybe I've been more successful than I thought in blocking out STV)

 

[scotpens]

I believe the first brown-skinned Vulcan we ever saw was in Spock's birth scene from ST V

Could you shrink the picture, please? I have to scroll to see the whole thing.