Triaxiansilk.com

I taught English as a Second Language to middle/high school students and adult students. And German to graduate students at the University of Virginia. I grew up hearing my parents speaking Filipino (Tagalog), but only spoke English to me and my sisters. I can comprehend Tagalog better than I can speak it. I can speak English, Italian, Spanish, some French, Mandarin and Japanese.

I can see Trip being able to comprehend Vulcan fairly easily, since the grammar is pretty straightforward, faster than being able to speak it. Especially if he's immersed in it (like he's living on Vulcan w/T'Pol, for instance). If Trip was to speak it, I think he'd be very aware of how he says the words, the accent, so he wouldn't be misunderstood. Would he "sound" like Trip normally would when he's speaking English? Probably not. Though his Southern accent would affect how he pronounced Vulcan...I don't think he'd lose it.

OK wow I missed so many things while the internet was out. OK why do I have to put (TM) after typing cool Vulcan mojo? We all know it's Aquarius' I'm not trying to steal anything. Wouldn't that be like Paris Hilton trying to tradmark "that's hot" ?

I am not saying Trip doesn't have an accent. Yes his accent will come through by the sounds he makes. People will comment on it. However he will pronounce the words properly. I guess Transwarp got what I was saying by saying "hot Vulcan babe" doesn't translate into Vulcan. I'm guessing that he couldn't make "Well don't that beat all" work either. So the majority of his way of pharsing things in english simply would not make sense in Vulcan.

Since Trip would learn Vulcan as an adult, I think he'd speak it with a Southern U.S. accent even if he eventually learns it pretty fluently. Also, I think that how you speak a foreign language will depend a lot on how your teacher(s) speak it. Most of my English teachers in school spoke with a British accent, and thus I speak the Queen's English. So Trip's accent would be a mix of Southern U.S. and whatever dialect T'Pol speaks (if they have dialects on Vulcan).

Transwarp wrote:(How well is "You're one smoking-hot Vulcan babe" going to translate into Vulcan?)

Ha-tor vuzh-fal kosu. I couldn't resist.

But would the average Vulcan understand that? I very much doubt it. Just because you can say something in another language doesn't mean the person will know what you mean.

WarpGirl wrote:OK wow I missed so many things while the internet was out. OK why do I have to put (TM) after typing cool Vulcan mojo? We all know it's Aquarius' I'm not trying to steal anything. Wouldn't that be like Paris Hilton trying to tradmark "that's hot" ?

It's part of the *joke*. Honeybee added the (tm) a while ago, especially because I capitalize Cool Vulcan Mojo when I use it, like it's a brand.

'course it's not as funny when you explain it, but I guess most jokes aren't.

You didn't use a smiley.

It's not a requirement.

WarpGirl wrote:But would the average Vulcan understand that? I very much doubt it. Just because you can say something in another language doesn't mean the person will know what you mean.

I know, WG. Of course they wouldn't understand. I was only using my kind of humour. I doubted Trip would say such a thing in public, but he has has the same kind of humour as mine, he could use it when he is trying to tease T'Pol.

Oh I bet he might. But I was just trying to illustrate why I think he wouldn't use the same type of pharses he would speaking english when he speaks Vulcan simply because they wouldn't make any sense to a Vulcan.

I know using smiley's isn't a requirement but I had no idea why someone was telling me to put a TM everytime I wrote out cool Vulcan mojo.

WarpGirl wrote:Oh I bet he might. But I was just trying to illustrate why I think he wouldn't use the same type of pharses he would speaking english when he speaks Vulcan simply because they wouldn't make any sense to a Vulcan.

That was my joke. That something you can't translate a phrase, because it doesn't make sense in another language. Which proves both our points!

WarpGirl wrote:You didn't use a smiley.

I never use smileys (or any other emoticons). For me, it's a matter of principle. Not that I find anything WRONG with them, mind you; it's just that as a writer, I feel I should be able to make my meaning clear without having to append a little smiley face. Sometimes I rewrite my remarks several times before posting, to try to avoid any misunderstanding. Most of the time, I am successful. (Before you rush to contradict me, please note that the phrase 'Most of the time' is DELIBERATELY imprecise.)

I must admit I am occasionally tempted to find a reason to use the Evil Pointing Monkey, but that is a character flaw I have (so far) managed to contain...

Sometimes they're nifty little time-savers and space-savers..

For example, it's quicker and takes up less space to use than to say "You can't see it, but I'm shrugging right now."

And is quicker than saying, "Wow, that's so hilarious, it's a real knee-slapper!"

Personally, I think that's okay in written casual conversation. In real life, oftentimes you'd just shrug at the person you're talking to or you'd just laugh, without any additional comment. You also get other facial cues when you're with someone in order to help you decipher what they're *really* saying--I like that somebody came up with these guys to help that along. Plus they're just so damn cute sometimes!

One time at a Star Wars forum, we used mostly emoticons to tell an entire story. It was pretty funny! And come to think of it, most of us who participated in the game were wordsmiths, too--you had to get pretty creative sometimes because you have a finite number of emoticons. It was Big!Crazy!Fun! (TM). (no smiley)

As I writing teacher, I would frown sternly and pull out a correcting pen if I saw an emoticon used in formal communication or discourse. I don't think I've ever used one in a story - but I can imagine that I would if two characters were texting and the text appeared in the story. Short text communication is here to stay and thus emoticons are here to stay.

I use them all the time on boards and in texts. I have a pretty deadpan sense of humor - and a few times my jokes have been lost on people (just yesterday poor WG thought I was offended over her slam at T'Pol being a Romulan, when I wasn't ). So, I definitely use emoticons when I am trying to evoke something quickly and make clear my tone.

I love the post modern idea of a fic/story ENTIRELY done with emoticons. Send a link if you've got it, Aquarius.

I'll try to hunt it up--it's an old thread at Nerfherder's Playground. We lost a lot of stuff when Yuku got hacked a couple of years ago, but it seems to me that might've been one of the threads they were able to recover. It was definitely a challenge sometimes--each character was assigned a smiley to represent them, but that smiley also had do double as an actual emotion to communicate, so each reader and writer had to be able to ascertain what's going on contextually--just as in English when we have words that look/sound alike gut get used differently.

Much creative use was made of the smiley that was getting flushed down the toilet.