tiberio@seismo.UUCP (Mike Tiberio) (03/15/84)
Recent activity in this news group has caused me to review my ST I and II video tapes. One thing began to bother me recently and that is, why would conversation in a language like Vulcan, which I assume has a richer phoenetic base than english, take the same number of syllables as english. From what I know about the way the create extra terrestrial spoken languages in the movies, I can only assume the take the English and scramble the syllables, resulting in the same number. Is my assumption about the Vulcan spoken language unreasonable? ty
martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) (03/16/84)
Phonetic richness has nothing to do with number of syllables. Arabic is much richer than English phonetically. Yet if a person says a passage in English and then translates the passage into Arabic, the translation will have fewer syllables.