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How realistic is Star Trek’s Tamarian language? - Darmok and Jalad
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2023
- Picard and Darmok at El-Adrel, Chinese chengyu, and memes aplenty. How realistic is Star Trek's Tamarian?
Special thanks to Timekettle for letting me try out their next best think to the universal translator!
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The greatest scene from this ST:NG episode was when Captain Picard was able to speak to the Tamarian ship crew, explaining the death of their captain in their own language. It mirrors that awe-inspiring moment a language learner feels when she is able to say something relatively complex to an audience of native speakers of the target language, and they understand her and respond. EPIC moment . . .
It is epic in both directions. Having someone speaking to you who previously wasn't able to can be quite moving. Being understood, even more so.
Yes yes! Timba and rest....
My favourite example is in Russian, I had a translating job and I came across the phrase лебедь, рак, и щука (literally, a swan, a crab, and a pike fish) - it's a reference to a Russian folk-tale about three animals who aren't able to cooperate to carry a load across a river because one wants to swim, one wants to crawl, and one wants to fly - used idiomatically it refers to people collaborating ineffectively or working at cross-purposes. However without the cultural context there's no way to parse it.
English has a version of that idiom. "There are too many cooks in the kitchen"
@@thelordz33German has something similar: "zu viele Köche verderben den Brei". It roughly translates as "too many cooks make the porridge bad" and means, that it's not good if too many people work at the same thing.
@@rfvtgbzhnEnglish has this in a similar form; “Too many cooks spoil the broth”
a camel is a horse designed by a committee
I saw a meme of Picard and Dathon that uses memes instead of the mythical references:
Dathon: "Lisa, standing before the blackboard"
Picard: "What is this man going on about?"
Dathon: *sighs* "Picard and Riker, heads in their hands. Jesse, to Walter over breakfast."
Picard: "Wait, memes? You're speaking in memes? Uh, anime man, pointing to a butterfly."
Dathon: "Ah, man behind tree rubbing his hands!"
This episode lives rent-free in my head all the time. I had no idea I was not the only one. I always thought it was one of the cleverest concepts, but I've never run into anyone else talking about it, let alone seen the memes. That's awesome.
I"ll never forget it!
Because the walls fell that’s why
I've been saying for years, even before memes really took off, that nerds and geeks speak Tamarian all the time.
Or at least this geek does. Part of the reason I married my husband was he figured out faster than most that when I said something like "can I have a cup of Prawn tea?" I didn't want steeped shrimp I meant Rooiboos or Red tea which is from South Africa, just like the "Prawn" aliens from District 9.
But if you've ever struggled talking to co-workers or customers because you suddenly realized they won't get the Simpsons quote that your friends would instantly get as an explanation, congrats, you've been speaking Tamarian ;)
oh, yeah, but IRL people CAN'T speak ONLY in memes otherwise they understand nothing. You need context, and the Tamarian language lacks it.
@@marhawkman303I imagine that at some point in the past they did have context, they had a full language like any earth language, that gradually evolved into mostly memes
@@CaseyShontz right but each individual has to learn it THEN start communicating in memes.
Loved this episode, a language spoken 100% in idioms is such a cool concept
There's a serious linguistic theory that almost all language is metaphor - originated by Michael Reddy, I think, and popularised (among linguists, at least) by George Lakoff.
Yah, until you have the TTRPG supplement for Lower Decks... decide to choose a Tamarian as your race (because their in the book) and have to actually use it in your speech.
Lower Decks handled it by having him speak common but slip in because the universal translator has gaps. He'll basically speak normal, but when he can't find a word like "gift" switches back to how Tamarian speak their own langauge.
Different episode, but in The Ensigns of Command, Troi says to Picard
"Suppose we are marooned on a planet. We have no language in common, but I want to teach you mine. Sizmareth. What did I just say?" Indicating the cup of tea she's holding. Picard and Troi then go through various possibilities to illustrate the difficulties of communication. When I was about 12, I thought what i might do, what do I need in order to communicate in a basic way. I thought of object, function, identity (me, you, you plural, us, them, them plural), need, directions, relative spaces (further, closer etc), and came up with about 300 words that I thought could be used to convey most important concepts. I was both kind of amazed that a kind of sense could be made of those that would suffice for the basics.
I absolutely have invoked "Kobayashi Maru" in conversation.
Picard, his face in his hand.
The Rubicon is a river in Italy that marked the northern boundary of Rome. Julius Caesar crossed it with his legion which he was forbidden to do. His crossing the river under arms amounted to insurrection, treason, and a declaration of war on the state.
Carrying weapons into Rome's borders was also forbidden and the punishment for doing so was a death sentence.
The die has been cast.
For added context:
The modern meaning of "crossing the Rubicon," as reference to this deed, is a decisive and irrevocable act.
Some research I was working on awhile back suggests a similar phenomenon in Roman Art. Individual scenes or figures seem to be used to repeatably communicate a singular theme or idea rather than specifics of a particular story. I gave a talk on early Christian funerary decoration as memes in my department, but I didn't connect it to this TNG episode. I absolutely should have though! Good stuff!
He was vague about it, but the British Poet Robert Graves wrote about Celtic narratives used in a similar way.
Man, dude, that ad you just did was the only one I've watched on TH-cam for years. You compared it to the universal translator and you're a linguist. They better be paying you extra well AND giving you head of something. Cause ... Damn. Possibly the best product placement a company could ever ask for.
I even rewound to make sure he really said "offline".
I'd watch the ad as a standalone video.
Same here. I was about to skip through it but then I was like, wait, I gotta see how that works
I WANT one. I usually skip ads, and I haven’t ever bought anything resulting from a TH-cam ad. Though I have given it some thought a couple of times. But wow, I REALLY want one of these. In another timeline, I studied linguistics. And in THIS timeline, I bought the fourth season of ST: TNG specifically because of THIS episode. This thing is beyond cool, and now I’m trying to figure out if I can convince my bf - a NASA scientist who actually does travel the world - to buy one, just so I can play with it. 😂 Most effective ad placement EVER.
I'm glad to learn the origins of the horse/deer idiom, which I first encountered in Japanese class in the form "baka", which just means "fool" with the characters for horse and deer.
And the Rubicon is in Italy and Roman armies were not permitted to approach the Capital for fear of exactly the sort of coup that Julius Caesar undertook when he brought his army back across the Rubicon. Crossing the Rubicon is the moment the die is cast.
SO I paused to answer a question from my spouse, only to find... yeah.
"the die is cast" is yet another idiom haha
@@joeg451 : Indeed, you see what he did there.
@@joeg451 An idiom from the same event, no less - Caesar allegedly said "alea iacta est" ("the die is cast") after crossing the Rubicon.
@@tmcantine "baka" in Japanese is most likely unrelated to that Chinese idiom. The Japanese Wikipedia page for 馬鹿 lists 8 possible etymologies, and the Chinese idiom is one of them, but they don't really explain what the connection might be. Gogen-allguide points out that if it came from the Chinese idiom you'd expect it to use the kanbun reading 馬鹿, which would be "baroku" not "baka"; "ka" is a kun'yomi of 鹿, not an on'yomi. So it's most likely a word that was not originally from Chinese but picked up the kanji "馬鹿" as ateji, i.e. kanji that are just used for their sound and not their meaning. (It was pretty common to assign ateji to non-Chinese words hundreds of years ago when hiragana/katakana were less common and there was more of a tendency to try to write everything in kanji.) Both 馬 and 鹿 were not uncommonly used as ateji for "ba" and "ka" sounds respectively, so the fact that they were put together like this doesn't necessarily point to a reference to the Chinese story about the emperor and deer and horses.
What's always bugged me about this language is that, unless I have grossly misunderstood that scene, they figured out what this language was doing by looking at the myth-history of people from some completely different planet.
The funny thing is, it just stopped bugging me, because I realized what must be going on. From the Tamarian perspective, what we know as Tamarian is a conlang. They'd been failing to communicate with other people for a century. It must've occurred to them at some point that in order to explain how their language worked, they'd need to use other cultures' nouns.
Good point. Or else they, like Terran cultures, had been in enough contact with other alien cultures that they had developed a common body of tales and myths. Like the Odyssey story of Odysseus and the cyclops has an almost exact counterpart in a Central Asian Turkic epic from 2000 years later. Possibly bc when the Greeks after Alexander the Great ruled parts of Central Asia and India, greek literature still formed part of every educated persons curriculum, notably the Homeric epics, for several hundred years afterwards. Or like how the Flood myth in Genesis originally came from an episode in the Sumerian myth and was incorporated into the Babylonian version of Gilgamesh.
One of my top three favorite Next Gen episodes. "Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk"
This genuinely blew me away. Had never heard of Tamarian, just absolutely fascinating to think about
I think this is the first time I've ever seen a video sponsorship that's actually interesting.
In addition to the wonderful things that are Tamarian, metaphors, memes, cultural references... this was a very apt conjunction of channel, topic and content sponsor in this episode.
It was surprising how much more authentic it feels in this video vs the typical TH-cam sponsorship. I actually listened to it instead of skipping over it. Wish this was more of the norm.
You never did answer the question I had; how could their language be so based on metaphor that they would no longer be able to communicate anything directly? If they were no longer able to communicate things directly, how would they be able to tell the stories that the metaphors reference? When Picard and Dathon trade stories, it seems that they do so with great difficulty. In fact, I wonder how much Dathon really understood of Picard's story. Or maybe he just inferred meaning intuitively. The whole thing still makes me wonder how plausible the language really is.
MST3K mantra.
They learn all their reference material from TV show reruns, obviously.
"What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a notion fixed, canonic, and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses; coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal."
This, but for language.
We learn words almost exclusively by usage and not by their referents or the etymology.
The word "bear" is a really good example because it's a euphemism. Do we need to know that bear is a euphemism for the PIE word _*rtko_ in order to use the word or to understand it?
Do we need to have encountered the referent for a bear to be able to grasp the word?
Obviously not. So if we can have a language which is essentially a first-order metaphor then it seems entirely possible that we could have a language like Tamarian.
In the episode, Picard learns to intuit the meanings of Tamarian phrases from context. It follows that Dathon is able to do the same with Earth references, and perhaps with greater ease.
That bugged me too, for the longest time. Then I had children. Young children use language very literally - they say what they see. They struggle to grasp deeper meaning. I once said "I'm shattered", meaning tired; my three year old ran to find glue. As my children grew, they came to understand language in new ways. It's why puns are considered "Dad jokes" - puns help teach children to look for other meanings in words.
Yes, the Tamarians have basic language that they use to tell each other stories, the same way Picard told Dathon the Epic of Gilgamesh, but it's their equivalent of "See Spot Run". Imagine trying to hold diplomatic negotiations where you have to dumb everything down to toddler-speak.
Mr. Spock with his hand raised and fingers spread to you as well, my friend. And thanks for the interesting content.
I listened to an extensive podcast on the history of Rome 4 years ago; I think this is the meaning of "Cross the Rubicon."
The Rubicon is a river near Rome; the Roman Consul was supposed to disband his legions before crossing the bridge to return to Rome. The reason for this was to prevent the overthrow of the citizens' government by the military. Julius Caesar did not disband the legion when he crossed the Rubicon and marched into Rome with his troops. This made people scared that Caesar was going to declare himself King of Rome, which the Romans would not like, as they had overthrown their king and were proud not to have a king. Julius Caesar decided to declare himself Imperator (Emperor) instead of king so that the people would be okay with it.
That is a pretty poor explanation of Roman History, because the entire concept of Emperors came about literal decades after the death of Caesar. Caesar was a governor, then a Dictator (a legitimate position in the existing Roman system, which a person could hold for at most six months), then Consul (one of the Republic's two presidents, elected yearly) several times (there was, of course, a mandatory decade between one's terms as consul but that had been breaking down for a century when Caesar was born) before becoming Dictator for Life. His nephew Octavian (who went through a Lot of name changes but is remembered as Augustus) created everything at the core of the imperial system over the course of his many decades at the top of the entire system, essentially creating a hereditary monarchy within the bounds of the existing political system (all of the powers an emperor had on paper were bestowed in terms of the old system such that they directly owned all the most important provinces, were effectively consul, and could decide who was or was not in the senate).
Imperator was a military title, something awarded to a commander by his soldiers which would then be approved by the senate, allowing them to hold a major parade called a triumph, the greatest honor a roman officer could receive. It was the only time you were allowed to dress up like a king, and was never the actual title of Rome's emperors, hence why things are divided between the Principate (when they were known as Princeps, essentially the First Man in Rome) and the Dominate (when they were called Dominus, or Lord).
To Cross the Rubicon means to do something from which there is no coming back. Once you cross the Rubicon with an army without immediately disbanding that army, you've done the unthinkable and civil war has begun. At which point, the die is cast; you've rolled your dice and now all you can do is live with the outcome.
I love Star Trek!
Nice thing about Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra is that when you say it to someone, and they understand the reference, it confirms the point of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
This gave me the idea of creating a Tamarian-style language but based on references to Human history and mythology. Like: "Orpheus, looking back" for "lack of faith"
Thomas with his finger poking, 7 dwarves whistling
Interesting, you could do the same with Lot's Wife as a metaphor for disobedience.
@@Beohun
Interesting that you say that. In Hebrew we sometimes use the expression "Lot's wife" for someone who is frozen.
For example, "When I heard what happened, I literally became Lot's wife" (I froze).
It's not that common but I've heard it a few times.
As a marketing instructor I have to give you kudos for including sponsored content that was fun to watch and 100% integrated into the topic.
I had no idea about the wave of Darmok memes. How perfect. This might be my favorite video of yours.
💯 My 21st century impression of rewatching that TNG episode was that the Tamarians spoke in memes, which we absolutely do now. Score another point for Trek in predicting what our future would look like. Intentional or not.
I love the really shortened idioms that you hear sometimes like "Pot, kettle" or "Life, lemons". Or more related to the video, when there's some confusion over what's being referred to that gets a bit drawn out sometimes my family just says "Third base!" referring to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First". and I am definitely one of the people who does the .jpeg sort of thing, bit called out on that one >.
Fonzie, his thumb up.
Eyyyyyyyyy
😂
Lol. Love it!
If you know enough metaphors you can communicate like that. They italian Mafia is using this kind of communication successfully for a very long time. If the metaphors are changed regullarly it is impossible to decode it in time by the police.
Darmok is one of the greatest episodes of Star Trek. Nothing will change my mind on this.
Pharaoh, his heart hardened.
Definitely was one of the sparks for my interests and love of linguistics! Great video!
Really digging your stuff man. Thanks for taking the time to make this content.
Thank you for making this video. I always wondered about this. The Tamarian language is based on metaphors, relating to stories in their culture; but how do they tell the stories?
I'm thinking maybe Tamarian children are told these commonly held stories over and over, but perhaps with added "baby" words at first to make the metaphors more clear. (But then, if that were the case, why doesn't Darmok try Tamarian "baby talk" with Picard?).
Another option is that these metaphors are SO ingrained into Tamarian psychology that they are passed down unconsciously from generation to generation [which could theoretically happen if the Tamarian culture were static enough for many millennia]. Perhaps the stories and associated metaphors are even artificially passed down by being "downloaded" into a baby's brain at birth. (!)
Yet another possibility is that Tamarians, long ago, spoke as we do, without depending so heavily on metaphors. But perhaps cultural changes or propaganda drilled and reinforced these story-based idiomatic metaphors SO strongly that these phrases eventually became the only accepted/polite way of speaking for adults, then even children and adults, until it became the ONLY way any Tamarian knows how to speak about anything. [One wonders how they speak metaphorically about highly specialized actions involving medicine, science or technology, but perhaps they have such a long-lived culture with so many long-held tales, ancient and recent, encompassing anything a Tamarian can or could do, such that there is literally a reference that applies to EVERY concept, no matter how abstract or technical].
I want to know how they would label a tape measure or a set of scales.
@@DataLal it's a very extreme case of course in the show, but there's plenty of idioms in use in human languages today where the origin isn't immediately clear and sometimes the person even processes it as one "word" (chunk) rather than its constituent parts anymore. They may not even be aware they're referencing stories at all.
They would call the tape measure "man" and the scales "justice". @@shoo7130
@@kaitlyn__Lthat happens in many epic songs in performance. When the schaes Lord and Parry were researching Yugoslavia oral epic songs they found that the singers, all non literate, would often think of an entire line as a single word. Their poetic language was is so formula driven that a single image of a half or full line became a single indivisible unit and stood for so to speak every other song or tale that it could appear in. The power of allusion!
That episode, which took ten years to write and develop was the focus of the third chapter of my elective undergrad thesis (yeah, I requested permission to add a thesis. I am good with the judgments that invites 🤓. That episode justifies owning a tv (or streaming device).
“Crossing the Rubicon” refers to Julius Caesar returning to Rome with his army, which was a tacit declaration of war.
He won, and the rest was history.
THIS f****g episode has been firmly and permanently implanted in my mind LOOOOONG before I even suspected I was an language groupie. It was just so powerful and intriguing in ways I couldn't comprehend then any more than I can rationalise now. This is why, even as a Jedi-master StarWars fan, I consider Star Trek the most widely-known, true science fiction work of all times.
But then again, of course a Vulcan would say something like that, right?
This is actually preceded by the Ascian language in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. Basically, the speakers are conditioned by a NK/1984 like society to only speak from the “Approved texts.”
LanguageJones, his Linguistics unfurled 😮
A fantastic episode from you, about my favoirite TNG episode. Thanks!
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I periodically have to make a video I know won’t do great, but it’s gratifying for me, and maybe a select few
@@languagejones6784 I always find idioms interesting in language learning, and always useful for conversing (and sounding more natural) with native speakers
The algorithm JUST made me watch the Darmok episode for the first time a few days ago, and then this video came out. :O
That sponsor is unbelievably cool
I watched that episode just two days ago and it was so much fun. I just began watching your videos today, so it's extra cool to come across this one. Now, to actually watch it. 😉
Thank you!!! This was the first video of yours that I've watched. I am a lifelong Star Trek fan, and this was fantastic! ❤❤
A bit tough to say “raise the shields” or “disengage the Heisenberg compensators” in Tamarian. Makes one wonder how they built ships, put their kids through medical school and followed recipes all in metaphors.
I was thinking that same thing!
Well this being science fiction, once we start digging deeper of course it's not going to hold up. But that misses the point of the story being told. The point of the story is to show how difficult it can be to communicate with someone who is unlike ourselves and how if we make the effort to try and understand each other, we can overcome an unfortunate outcome (a space battle in this case). And so the episode works very much like how the Tamarian language works in that a story is being used to make a larger point.
apparently they have a highly sophisticated whistle system for communicating precise things like that
Great video! But pausing and rewinding 3 times to see the super short subtitle around 11:25 was very Picard, his hand on forehead
This was an AMAZING video. Thanks so much. When I saw this air on TV so many years ago, it was life changing.
Instead of 'crossing the Rubicon', I think a better example would be 'nail the colors to the mast'.
I'm so glad I found this video. I've thought about this episode off and on over the years and how it really feels so much like online meme culture so I was pretty excited when you brought that up. I had no idea about the connection with Chinese dialects though, that was really interesting to learn!
Can't believe I just found this video! I'm Chinese and also a Star Trek fan and Darmok is one of my favorite episodes. I remember when watching this episode and thinking "they just like 鸡同鸭讲("chicken talk to the duck", means can't understanding each other because they don't speak the same language or has huge conceptual differences)" and suddenly it hits me "oh that's chengyu!". Really a great episode.
The episode premiered on September 30th which is International Translation Day.
Well, if all the "words" in the language are references to stories... in what language are the stories told? Yes, there's an obvious problem.
There are some more Tamarian phrases in Lower Decks
Picard: "MEMES! YOU SPEAK IN MEMES! Uhh... Asian man, Pointing at Butterfly!"
Alien captain: "Man behind tree, rubbing hands together! Bearded man, nodding in forest!"
A lot of classical Latin poetry is like this also, where figures from Roman mythology are used as stand-ins for the nouns they're most associated with. So, instead of saying 'bellum' for 'war' you'd say 'Mars', or 'Diana' instead of 'venatio' for 'hunting'.
When I started reading Roman poetry after learning Latin through medieval sources, this was a big culture shock for me.
Oh my god. This is the first time I’ve actually, actively watched a sponsored content segment
Timekettle I my have to get these ear buds.😱 so cool
i love languages and i love Star Trek... your breakdown of this interesting language and its Earthly counterparts was intriguing... "Michelle Tanner, You've Got It Dude", "Quasimodo at Norte Dame"....
The NFL subreddits turn into Tamaranian: 28-3 in the third quarter, David Tyree against his helmet, Malcom Butler on the Goal Line, Norwood wide right. People can pull these situations and scenarios perfectly...
OMG so true. Leon Lett, almost to the endzone. Even just "Malcolm, go!" I wish I knew other sports well enough to recognize their versions.
I remember a book I read as a teenager.
I think it was from the series ‘the books of the new sun’ by Gene Wolf.
In it someone told a story. ‘No man shall receive more than a hundred blows.’ It was than translated by another character as ‘he was beaten, badly.’ The rest of the story within the story was along the same lines.
The idea of communicating via shared knowledge of prior events is not uncommon. If i say ‘Trojan horse’ most people know what it means, but it is meaningless to anyone who does not know the story.
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany was, at its core, about language and how it could be used as a weapon.
Crossing the Rubicon, I know this one-- that refers to abducting the crew of a runabout and forcing them to cook meth for you before you die of the shakes!
"Cersei on her balcony, while the Sept burns"
The development of the language is perhaps the biggest omission here. They can't have *always* spoken a language which referenced their literature/mythology. There must have been a time when they had a more recognisable language, because that's what the original stories must have been told *in*.
And that also implies that they no longer know the actual stories themselves. Because they're not *choosing* to speak in metaphor, it's the only way they know how to communicate. Which means that they can't tell their children the stories and instead the children *only* know those phrases with the associated meanings - in the same way that people can know the word "metaphor" without ever thinking about the etymology.
They are Space Americans. Aliens could easily be told, "Back it up, or we'll open up a whole can of whoop a$$ on you. Break our boot off in your a$$. Real boots on the ground type situation." Imagine trying to figure that out.
Caesar committed his troops to occupy Rome. I just recently watched Darmok and Jalad so this video kicked me in the teeth.
I just re-watched the episode and then I stumbled over this video. Perfection!
A fun example of this are kennings in the old norse texts. Odin hangs himself from yggdrasil, the world tree, and in the poetic edda he talks about how he "rode" that tree, not hung from it. if you decipher what the word yggdrasil actually means in english, its something like 'odins horse'.
sleipnir, odin's actual horse, is said to be eight-legged
whether or not it actually had eight legs is debatable, but its more likely (imo) this is an allusion to the fact that the horse was so fast (it was the horse of all horses after all) that it's legs became a blur, and was therefore 'eight-legged'
if you dont know who odin is or sleipnir is and was told the horse had eight legs, you might think it did when really they just meant it was a fast horse
I saw that episode, several times. While I understood a couple of things you said in Tamarian, It's been a while and memory fades over time. At the end - Peace and long life.
9:02 And some people even get the idiom correct. (It's "make head or tail of".)
9:15 "Step in it"??
10:03 So, the emperor's new clothes?
10:28 I'd have thought "to burn your bridges/boats" would be a better fit.
I have used those lines to respond to online scammers and creeps. Stops them in their tracks.
Yeah, I could just ignore them but my way is more fun.
It's "Temba, his arms wide", and "his face black his eyes red" means anger, not dismay. He was pissed at the Enterprise for the attack.
This episode predicted meme culture half a decade before the first internet meme. And it's amusing that it's gone full circle and references ST:TNG now. See a jumble of words that make no sense? "Data and Lore, in the hallway." Still don't understand? "Picard, with his face in his hand."
Today I was reading about the crash of Helios Flight 522 in Greece in 2005. The plane became depressurized and everyone was deprived of oxygen and died. The plane kept flying until it ran out of fuel. At one point the plane flew over Tanagra. Where have I heard that name before, I thought. Star Trek, that's it! Turns out that Tanagra is a town in Greece north of Athens. That would mean that Darmok and Jalad have been to Greece. I'm guessing on vacation. See, understanding an alien language isn't difficult.
I somehow remember this episode and it's very tortured acting and lumpen script.
What i found odd is that Star Trek's linguistic deux ex machina, the universal translator, seemed to suddenly forget what idioms are. So, it can handle every aspect of language EXCEPT idioms?
The problem here is that all of the idioms are based in a history and mythology that the computer does not have available to reference. It translates the words, but cannot access the cultural knowledge necessary to translate the idiom.
EDIT: Also, as the entire language is composed of idioms, there is insufficient context to determine what any single idiom means, as it might be able to do with an occasional idiom in another language.
Same as any other first contact, though, right? And often enough idioms in English appear without any surrounding context as well. I had someone yell "hair of the dog, eh?" at me across the street, once, with no other context until I realized he was referring to the bottle of ginger beer I was drinking, which he could probably not see was alcoholic-free.
The Rubicon is the river boundary of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed (but more importantly with his legions), and it was the first time Roman legions "entered the city" in a hostile-ish manner.
First off, yeah I know this video is over a year old (I just found it in my feed), second, I went completely off of memory.
How'd I do?
It's not often that I watch the entirety of a sponsorship, but that product is fascinating!
That was so fun. Thank you!
I never thought about it but I am so sure this episode was inspired by the Ascian language in The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf
Thank you Languagejones.👍
Great work.
Julius Cesar crossed the Rubicon, a river in northern Italy. It was a point in which his legions should not cross. If he crossed the river with his legions it would be considered an act of war or treason against the Republic.
Fantastic video! Super impressive! Great work
Every language uses conceptual metaphors. Cognitive Linguistics explores this deeply. There are conceptual metaphors in all of these sentences.
When I first saw it, I thought the UT had a stroke. 😂 However, there wouldn't be a actual broken UT for decades. Still, it was a good epidural.
The inefficiency of that language of theirs should make advanced reasoning and the science needed for space travel impossible.
Some advanced species must've gifted them warships for entertainment purposes...
Bravo. This video is a masterpiece in pretty much every way.
I'm a native Russian speaker (a notoriously idiomatic language) at home and also come from a family of doctors (notoriously impenetrable sense of humor) , meaning that most of my friends don't understand half the shit I'm saying. I'm waiting for the day I meet someone who immediately understands what j mean when I say someone's counting crows and thinking about zebras instead of horses.
This is brilliant TH-cam content when Shaka whem the walls fell.
Imagine how many idioms and gestures we take for granted every day. A smile might mean a mortal insult to an alien. Saying "Hold on a moment".... hold on to what?
Darmok and Tamarian communication is a sci fi exaggeration of that issue for a television episode.
That universal translator would really kick ass if it had your own voice. Technically possible with the current advancements in AI. God i hope this becomes available before we destroy ourselves. We are this close.
The first episode if the next generation that I actually saw, amazing episode
"Point at a deer. Call it a horse" is a lot easier to guess the meaning than. "Draw snake, add feet???"
My understanding is if your goal is to draw a snake, it would be unnecessary added effort for no reason to include feet. Drawing feet are not a part of drawing a snake. You are "doing too much."
It's like saying "I'm going to clean the house before company comes over in an hour" and then deciding to go ahead and refinish your cabinets while you're at it. That wasn't your goal.
OK the sponsor... holy cow. That shit is so cool!
What bugged me about this episode for the longest time is that the Tamarians must have more basic language that they can use to initially _tell_ those stories, otherwise they'd never be able to communicate their meaning to children. But then I realised that yes, they _do_ have that level of language, but it's their equivalent of "See Spot Run".
I think one of the things that really helped me to understand was watching my own children's understanding of language develop. With young kids, everything they say is super literal, or at least as well as they understand it. One of the reasons puns are known as "Dad jokes" is because puns are an important element of teaching children that words don't always hold their obvious meanings. To the Tamarians, Picard's mature, dignified diplo-speak is basically a toddler babbling "You fwiend?"
It should've been "itching". My head would've exploded if it'd been "itching".
I'm guessing most ppl watching this probably know the Rubicon was a river near ancient Rome that generals were not supposed to take their armies across. Caesar ordered his men to cross it and used their presence to have himself crowned emperor.
It would be great if you could make a video about Tolkien, his love and knowledge of language and how it relates to LOTR.
I'd be super interested in your analysis of Gene Wolfe's Ascian. Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts.
Even more impressive: C3PO can translate 6 million languages and was created by 6 year old Anakin Skywalker. 😮
Crossing the Rubicon is one Western equivalent, but English also has an almost literal equivalent: burn the ships. Its not as common, but it exists.
Oooooh, so the weird inside joke language that my husband and I use to talk to each other is actually a totally valid language and not just "weird" 😂
Could we have a Tamarian metaphor to English metaphor translator?
When we use the Narsacist were are kind of using what is a proper noun and a story to describe them.