embedded geek

[cellio]

A friend shared this with me earlier today and I literally laughed out loud:

(Source)

The second-last column is about a famous Zulu leader. The last one is about walled cities under fire.

"Shaka, when the walls fell" is a key phrase in a rather unusual episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, named "Darmok". The famous universal translator doesn't work when the Enterprise encounters these particular aliens, because their language doesn't work at the word level. They speak in what the crew calls metaphor. I've seen discussions of this over the years ("could that really work?" "improbable, because..."). The post about the Jeopardy episode links to this Atlantic article about the episode that argues that we're looking at it all wrong. I found it an interesting read.

Also, Atlantic does in-depth articles about episodes of SF shows? Who knew?

(I don't have a Trek icon. Here, have one from one of my favorite shows instead.)

Comments

[stitchwhich]

I think it would work if their version of baby-talk was learning words in the earthly manner, and as they grew older and learned history and prose they developed an adult language such as we saw. They would need a word-based language in order to craft and understand the sounds they were using for metaphor.

Dr. Benjamin Spock, in college.

[thnidu]

I'm pretty sure I have read a comment that explains (headcanon? Hypothesis?) that this metaphor constraint applies only in formal (diplomatic?) situations , and that in informal conversation they go back to the more familiar word based vocabulary.