Re: Difficult language ideas

David,

Thank you for mentioning this wonderful Star Trek episode. It's been a long
time since I've seen it, but after your bringing it up I remembered
intensely how fascinated I was by this language concept. And it was nice to
see that the universal translator cannot crack every language.

Dan





From: David J. Peterson
"Regarding this, and idioms, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned that
Star Trek episode.  I can't remember the famous phrase, but it's something
like "Darmok and Jelad at Tanagra", and that's supposed to mean something.
As far as I can tell, the language that this alien culture has *can* be
translated by the Universal Translator, but the aliens choose to use mainly
proper names, so what gets translated has no meaning.  (Of course, the UT
should be able to get something out of this, but we can ignore that for
now...)



Anyway, going along with what Teoh was saying, they can be purposely
creating phrases that mean something completely different.  So, for
example...



Kosta eats with Teleno.



So, "eats with" would be translated into the language, and it would fit all
the rest of the language patterns, but it would mean the above.  This, then,
could refer to an obscure historical event where, say, two philosophers that
didn't like each other came to eat together one day, and got into an
argument.  Saying "Kosta eats with Teleno", then, could mean something like,
"I disagree with x (whoever the topic is), but I will put up with him for
now".



And the language could be filled with a bunch of these.  And further,
whenever someone undesirable figures out what one of them means, its meaning
could be changed, or a new expression could be used to mean the same thing.
-David"

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