Re: Darmok beyond the pale; was: criteria

On 12/11/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...>
>
>
> >> So I have
> >> tried to make T. into a language that invokes a lot of metaphors for
> >> ordinary actions.  "Juliet on the balcony," is how Troi explained what
> >> might
> >> mean, in Darmokian (?),
> >
> > Tamarian. Spoken by the race known as "Children of Tama" or "Tamarians".
Speaking of "Darmok", our friend the Tensor just today posted a timely
blog entry about that episode here:

http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2006/12/darmok.html

Includes an episode summary and the predictably negative linguistic
analysis.  A snippet I found amusing:

> If all you're doing is arguing about a general course of action, [Tamarese] might be
> enough, but how can you run a starship using it?  When the captain wants to tell the
> helmsman to go to warp factor five, does he say, "Darmok...uh...that time he went warp
> factor five"?  At the end of the episode, in fact, the first officer orders his ship to warp out
> of orbit with "Mirab, with sails unfurled", which is used several times in the episode to
> mean something like 'go'.  Shouldn't the helmsman reply, "Mirab-with-sails-unfurled factor
> what, sir?".
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

Reply