Re: Star Trek conlangs besides Klingon and Romulan

On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Tim Smith wrote:

> According to Marc Okrand, the extensive Vulcan dialog in the first movie was
> not actually a "real" conlang.  The scenes were shot in English and later
> overdubbed with nonsense syllables devised by a linguist (not Marc) to
> match, or nearly match, the lip movements of the English, so that the
> overdubbing would look "real".  (There's a technical term for this, but I've
> forgotten it.)
How about "Cheesy, slipshod not-a-clue-in-the-universe it's-too-late-
to-do-anything-about-it-now production trickery"?

> There have been several fannish attempts to invent a Vulcan language.  (I've
> seen one of them; it looked to me like crudely relexified Japanese.)  But
> none of them have any relation to the "Vulcan" dialog in the movies.
This didn't happen to be the Starfleet Academy Training Manual "Vulcan
Language Guide", would it?  I wish I could find that little Japanese
dictionary that this work seems to be lifted from; but alas I fear it lost
somewhere.  And of course I don't know any Japanese, so can't comment on
it substantively.

>
> Someone on this list has done some work on a Ferengi conlang, and I think
> also on a Cardassian one.  But I can't remember who; it's been a long time
> since he posted anything about either of them.
I wasn't aware that either of these had been discussed here.  I know that
out in Webland somewhere, someone has made a rather extensive attempt at
Ferengi.

Padraic.

> Tim Smith