The Vulcan dialect used throughout Korsaya.org comes almost entirely from the work of Mark R. Gardner
et al from the
temporarily previously offline Vulcan Language Institute, which is commonly attributed as VLI. There is an official project known as the
Vulcan Language Institute Reclamation Project which was seeking to maintain the original creative work and scholarship that went into the creation of Golic Vulcan at the VLI while it was unavailable for several years. Some additional vocabulary comes from the renowned
Vulcan Language Dictionary (VLD), which appears to be THE Terran go-to resource for anyone who is seeking knowledge of the lexicon. Korsaya.org encourages anyone interested in learning Vulcan to make extensive use of these invaluable resources and humbly thanks those who operate these sites for their commitment to the support of Vulcan linguistics.
Ooh thanks! I noticed 3, 4, and 5 do not have the stems at the top. Does that mean a gap should be maintained?
oDeivid,
No, The stem (where present) is just an aid for clarity regarding precisely where the connection should happen and that it can overlap a tad. Normally the tail of the preceding number/character would cross into the body of numeric nuhm to the point of the bottom of the short stem, but these rules do not have to be strictly maintained. The short overlap is not required for differentiating the values of the numerals in any way. Please think of it more as a stylistic convention.
Are these characters named just like their syllabic roots? (wuh, dah, reh, etc.) If so, let me suggest that ancient Vulcan may have not had a number for zero, or that it was used differently. And also Vulcan may have had characters for ones, tens, one-hundred, one-million, etc. (kuh, leh, teh, zhoh, moh) and that perhaps the numbers weren’t written like we do — 12 is twelve, but in Vulcan it would be the character leh followed by dah (2). Character order would be very important in Vulcan since as you can see leh-dah means 12, but dah-leh means 20 –not 21, as in English’s reversal of the characters
oDzheimz,
I agree with you completely regarding the historical situation. These are modern numerals optimized for base-ten mathematics as opposed to ‘logographic’ representations of the words themselves. However, for efficiency’s sake the numerals’ names are simply:
0 ris
1 wuh
2 dah
3 reh
4 keh
5 kau
6 sheh
7 steh
8 oh
9 nau
“The Terran year 2012 ” (dah-leh-teh leh-dahr tevun t’Terra) would end up in everyday notation as 2012r tevun t’Terra.
I will have do do some further research into the historic forms of the characters for kuh, leh, teh, zhoh, moh… 😉
Wa’itaren n’nisaya-tuhskaya s’odu. Yauluhk heh ved sem-rik.
Thank you very much for your analytical commentary. It is important and quite fascinating.
s’Briht’uhn
I’m new in learning Vulcan, but I am seeing many striking resemblances is the spoken language between Asia speaking languages. I myself have studied Japanese, and after learn much of that, I find vulcan to come almost as if I already knew how to speak it. But writing it XD I still have a ways to go. I have to ask, when writing complex numbers in Vulcan, like say, 450,230, would you say each individual number or is their a compacted form? For example so you know what i am talk about (i tend to be a little hard to understand online) like in Japanese ichi ni san yon go….jyun would go to the tens which would be jyunichi(11) jyun being 10 and ichi being one twenty is nijyun, thirty is sanjyun etc. I havent seen the number section yet on this site, if it exists, I have only been around for 2-3 days so far.
I’m not really an expert on the numbers, but yes, essentially they work like English or Japanese. More like English actually. There is no number set for the 10,000s register as there is in Asia. I don’t have any tutorials on them here but, FULL LIST HERE. I hope this is helpful to you.
Sochya—
Actually that is perfect
thank you.
Hi
Would you connect the first number and go down and connect to the next number? Thank you.
Yes, Lillian.
They touch like the letters do.
Hi, am new to vulcan writing and am wondering how to go about wilting human names. Many of the symbols don’t relate to sounds that I can make my family’s names up with. Also when writing number (dates) how would I separate the numbers? eg. 21/09/1986?
Thanks; and your site is amazing!
Chris,
Thank you for your kind words.
Numerals can be found HERE in this article. For dates that are Earth-related, I would just order the digits as DD/MM/YYYY or YYY/MM/DD and then add an -R to the word “date”, which is kinuf, and then t’Terra if it’s to be in prose. To separate the numbers use a dotted circle like ⊙ with a short line leading into it from above and out of it from below.
Names are “capitalized” using a symbol called the ahm-glat. See the “Names and Punctuation” section on THIS PAGE. The main sound of English names that is missing from Golic Vulcan is the /æ/ (“a”) of “cat, bat, sat”. Typically the ah is substituted, but another sound could be better in certain contexts. The main thing is to go by SOUND. There is no C so it would become a K in Carl or an S in Celine. There is no J so it often becomes DZH. My name, Britton, becomes Briht’uhn when spelled in the Vulcan scripts of this site.
You could send the names in an e-mail to skladan ‹at› korsaya ‹dot› org and I could try to help you privately through that route.
Hello. I’m a life long ST fan and after much thought ive decided that i want a tattoo in Vulcan as its the only language i felt was appropriate. However i have no skill with languages what so ever. I was wondering if you would do translation. I’m aware its unlikely but im hopeful.
sincerely
merike x
merike —
I’ll need you to write to me at skladan {at} korsaya {dot} org to make the request formally through that channel. We can discuss the relevant factors regarding whether I can do it for you or not via regular e-mail better than hear in these comments.
s’Briht’uhn
I was wondering… how is it that the numbers are put together once you get past 9? Does 10 have it’s own symbol, or is it 1 and 0 put together? What of others like 11-99, ect…? I’ve been wondering this as I’ve been studying how to count to begin with…
I am still searching the blog for an answer, and I have much, still, to read…though so far it has come up empty.
Nemaiyo
-Matt
Matt,
10 would be written with a “10” just as in “Arabic” numerals for English. That’s pronounced LEH most of the time. Eleven (LEH-WUH) would be written 11. 99 is pronounced NAU-LEH-NAU. It is a standard decimal system.
Do you know the symbol for Zhou (million)
Would love to do it correctly. I currently use scientific notation, but this is so cool. Thanks
Lisa,
You’re looking for a single numeral that means one million as in the Chinese/Japanese 億 means 100,000,000 (one hundred million)?
I’m not sure that exists, but I could explore it.