[Ads-l] Earliest Use of "Live Long and Prosper"

Wed Feb 17 00:44:07 UTC 2016

According to Okrand's Wikipedia entry, he was working on Mutsun, a dialect of Ohlone (a.k.a. Southern Costanoan).

For other reasons I had occasion to look this up yesterday. Apparently it's the most widely spoken artificial language, according to an article someone sent me yesterday.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 7:36 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Earliest Use of "Live Long and Prosper"

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Earliest Use of "Live Long and Prosper"
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> On Feb 16, 2016, at 5:47 PM, W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>=20
> I recall from one my Vedic classes, there is an ancient Sanskrit =
expression
> with an identical sentiment. If there's any interest, I can try to dig 
> =
it
> up. (BYW, one of my teachers was consulted during the birth of =
Klingon. He
> gave a talk about his contribution, but none of it ended up in the =
first
> film. Skt just wasn't guttural enough.)
>=20
The inventor...er, discoverer of Klingon, Marc Okrand, was a student of = mine at UC Berkeley in 1970 and would likely (as a linguistics major) = have also taken Sanskrit there during that time.  The major influence on = Klingon, though, was a native Californian language, I believe extinct or = nearly so, that he was working on with Mary Haas using materials at the = Smithsonian.  I have nothing to contribute on "Live long and prosper" = but I can ask our local (emeritus) Sanskritist at Yale.

LH

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