posted
Okay, first of all, I don't know if this should be here or in the "Creativity" section, so apologies if I guessed wrong.
If you've been following my recent travails down in the Officers' Lounge, you'll understand why I have a lot of time on my hands. But as I continue to mend, I'm looking at low-impact things I can do. One thing I'm quite pleased about is that Seattle has a couple of first-rate language schools. I've always loved linguistics, so I decided -- among my other studies -- I'm going to go for a Doctorate in Linguistics. And, inspired by Dr. Okrand, I want my Doctoral Thesis to be a created language. Romulan, in my case.
I've alwaus loved their culture, their ships, their racial demeanor... I've started assembling as much raw data as I can find -- ship names, individual names, geographic names, cultural references, examples of dialogue -- from all the reasonably legitimate sources I can find. I am so far delving through RPG materials (FASA and LUG), CCG materials (Decipher), novels and comics, and of course close to 1,350 television episodes (yes, even Enterprise) and ten movies.
Anyone who has suggestion for additional sources, or feels they have an interesting take on how they or their language evolved, I welcome your imput, and if I incorporate anyone's idea(s), I'll cite them in my list of sources.
One thing in particular that I've a strong interest in doing is getting an accurate phoneme map of the Romulan character set -- and not necessarily a direct cross-linking to English sounds. Don't be afraid to link letters into a compound sound, a la Russian, Greek, or Japanese.
I've already noted the indigenous names for their trojan homeworld(s) as being ch'Rihan and ch'Havran, their name for themselves being Rihannsu, their exodus from Vulcan (T'Khasi), and the etymological link between the Vulcan execution technique of tal-shaya and the Romulan secret police force called the Tal Shiar.
I have also noted the common appearance of the 'v', 'ch', and 'k' or 'kh' sounds, as well as held-over vowels.
So what else can we come up with?
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Hey, Jonah, what a cool way to spend some recovery time.
I'd be interested in the influence of the Remans culturally, etc. My knowledge is somewhat limited, and Nemesis is a decidedly poor source, but it's obvious that these two have coexisted in the same space for some time. It might be interesting to motviate some of their pronounciations and place-names from Reman descent. My 2 cents.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Diane Duane's wrote quite a few novels that really fleshed out the Romulans. It's really a shame none of her stuff made it into cannon.
She called them "Rihannsu" for their own pronunciation of Romulan. Here is a list of her Rihannsu novels:
Star Trek: TOS #18: My Enemy, My Ally, Star Trek: TOS: Rihannsu #2: The Romulan Way, (written with Husband Peter Morwood) Star Trek: TOS #95: Swordhunt, Star Trek: TOS #96: Honor Blade Star Trek: TOS #??: The Empty Chair (Not yet published)
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Romulan and Vulcan have some similar sounding worlds- but thier scripts are completely different- but neither are complete languages as Klingonese is, I think fans have totally run with it to make it a full language- where as all the rest of the Trek languages are just bits and pieces really.
Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Originally posted by bX: I'd be interested in the influence of the Remans culturally, etc. My knowledge is somewhat limited, and Nemesis is a decidedly poor source, but it's obvious that these two have coexisted in the same space for some time.
Don't forget that there were some Reman guards(centurions?) on Romulus in the Enterprise episodes with those drone attack ships.
I doubt the Remans had a written language before becoming the Romulan's bitches. Telepathy would have allowed for a rich "oral" history of shared experiences.
Possibly the ability to vocalize sounds into speech was bred in by their Romulan masters for convience.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Hmm were Remans related in anyway to Romulans? Why did they develop differently? Was it that their ships landed on Remus after they fled Vulcan while the Romulans landed on Romulus? Or where they already there and the Romulans enslaved the Remans?
I would have thought the Romulans to be too proud to acknowledge the Remans as equals in things like their emblem/logo thingy.
It sort of implys they are equal or at least rely on one another.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
I'm not certain if the the Remans' genetic lineage has been addressed. I would have to vote for them being a separate species, because I can see the Romulans evloving to be just so slightly different than the Vulcans, but I think it'd take a lot more time for a Vulcan to evolve into something that looked like a Reman.
Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
I have never minded them. I think it can easily be reconciled that they had some intermingling with the Klingons, which fits with their history of friends/enemies and sharing things.
Remember Beverly said that Worf shared some ??enzymes?? with that dying Romulan?
I'd say there was some intermingling with the Remans too though - they have a vaguely Romulan look - well the brow and the pointed ears.
Or maybe the mines that they populated altered their Romulan heritge after a few generations to create a Reman race.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
How does that explain why some Vulcans have the raised foreheads then?
I think it's as likely that the Romulans represented some ethnic faction on Vulcan (possibly a super-power state) that got cheesed and mostly split for cold space, rather that bake in Vulcan's logic. Imagine the majority of asian people leaving Earth over some dispute...
On Vulcan the relativly few remianinig members of this ethnic offshoot were not discriminated against (as it would be illogical to do so) and thre eventually grew a population on Viuulcan with those "raised" traits.
Fuck all if this works with Enterprise though- I missed almost all of fourth season (gotta get that on DVD, damnit!)
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Jason, I think you have the germ of a wonderful idea there. I'll noodle on it a bit over the next few days and see what I can come up with. If there can be dark-skinned Vulcans with short, kinky hair, I see no reason why there can't be Vulcans with differently-shaped skulls...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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