It doesn’t matter what Darmok and Jalad are. For all a child knows, there’s just one person, Darmokandjalad. The point is that the complete sentence has a meaning.
Dissecting things with meaning is useless. Take the word “mouse”. We know what it means. However, what does “mo” mean? What about “s”, how do you know what that means in English?
The same is true for some words. “the” and “an” are useless on their own. You can’t form a sentence with “the on a by next to above”, those words all need a second component or they’re meaningless. Sentences also need verbs, just “The brown chair next to the fireplace green cushions from grandma” means nothing despite having several large sentence structures.
In an alien language, why should “wall” be a separate context? An alien knowing thousands of vowels and consonants may try to decipher the individual letters making up “mouse” but we only have multiple sounds in that because our inflexible throats just can’t make anything useful out of just one single note words.
How do you order a milkshake using just existing concepts? Break down the process of ordering a milkshake to simple events.
“Steve at Starbucks, his wallet open” means “I would like to purchase one thing, please”. “Daisy in the field, her hands pulling” means “milk”, “Daryll from accounting, down the mountain” means a cold tumble (Daryll got stuck in an avalanche, of course).
You’d say “Steve at Starbucks, his wallet open” instead of “good morning”. Then the other person says “Jessica at Target, her eyes wandering” to ask “what would you like to order”. You say “Daisy in the field, her hands pulling; Daryll from accounting, down the mountain”. The other person knows you want a milkshake. Repeat until the transaction succeeds.
Consider yourself in a Starbucks in another country. You have no idea how to speak the local language and they don’t speak English. However, you have plenty of money and you like what the guy in front of you has. All you need to do is nail the pronunciation.
You can pretty much repeat the words from the guy in front of you and you’ll get the same order. You don’t know what 早上好，請來一杯拿鐵瑪奇朵 means but you can hold a conversation. Listen in to enough conversations, and you may be able to determine what part means “good morning” and what parts make up the ordering process.
Kids are pretty good at picking up patterns like this, though they’ll get it wrong for a while too.
In a world where the patterns are all that matters, new expressions are probably derived from old ones. What does “when the walls fell” mean? No idea, but who cares! We’ve got “Arbok when the waves came”, “Biero before the walls fell”, “Cistu when the birds flew”, “Dokas on top of the walls”, and “Eryiu when the roof fell”. Poets could find the similarities and craft new meaning out of existing combinations without issue.
We do it too. What is a “computer mouse”? We took “computer” (a person doing calculations) and “mouse” (a small rodent) and combined it through common meaning enough to describe an object that is neither a person nor a rodent.
It would he quite interesting to see such a language evolve. You can see with idioms in English that the meaning inverses (“blood is thicker than water”, “great minds think alike”) because people wanted that effect, or because they don’t know that these idioms actually mean “friends are more special than family” and “if two people come up with the same idea, they’re idiots”. Perhaps “when the walls fell” would eventually be dropped at some point by the same methodology, leaving “Darmok and Jalat” as just meaning “two enemies”.
It doesn’t matter what Darmok and Jalad are. For all a child knows, there’s just one person, Darmokandjalad. The point is that the complete sentence has a meaning.
Dissecting things with meaning is useless. Take the word “mouse”. We know what it means. However, what does “mo” mean? What about “s”, how do you know what that means in English?
The same is true for some words. “the” and “an” are useless on their own. You can’t form a sentence with “the on a by next to above”, those words all need a second component or they’re meaningless. Sentences also need verbs, just “The brown chair next to the fireplace green cushions from grandma” means nothing despite having several large sentence structures.
In an alien language, why should “wall” be a separate context? An alien knowing thousands of vowels and consonants may try to decipher the individual letters making up “mouse” but we only have multiple sounds in that because our inflexible throats just can’t make anything useful out of just one single note words.
How do you order a milkshake using just existing concepts? Break down the process of ordering a milkshake to simple events.
“Steve at Starbucks, his wallet open” means “I would like to purchase one thing, please”. “Daisy in the field, her hands pulling” means “milk”, “Daryll from accounting, down the mountain” means a cold tumble (Daryll got stuck in an avalanche, of course).
You’d say “Steve at Starbucks, his wallet open” instead of “good morning”. Then the other person says “Jessica at Target, her eyes wandering” to ask “what would you like to order”. You say “Daisy in the field, her hands pulling; Daryll from accounting, down the mountain”. The other person knows you want a milkshake. Repeat until the transaction succeeds.
Consider yourself in a Starbucks in another country. You have no idea how to speak the local language and they don’t speak English. However, you have plenty of money and you like what the guy in front of you has. All you need to do is nail the pronunciation.
You can pretty much repeat the words from the guy in front of you and you’ll get the same order. You don’t know what 早上好，請來一杯拿鐵瑪奇朵 means but you can hold a conversation. Listen in to enough conversations, and you may be able to determine what part means “good morning” and what parts make up the ordering process.
Kids are pretty good at picking up patterns like this, though they’ll get it wrong for a while too.
In a world where the patterns are all that matters, new expressions are probably derived from old ones. What does “when the walls fell” mean? No idea, but who cares! We’ve got “Arbok when the waves came”, “Biero before the walls fell”, “Cistu when the birds flew”, “Dokas on top of the walls”, and “Eryiu when the roof fell”. Poets could find the similarities and craft new meaning out of existing combinations without issue.
We do it too. What is a “computer mouse”? We took “computer” (a person doing calculations) and “mouse” (a small rodent) and combined it through common meaning enough to describe an object that is neither a person nor a rodent.
It would he quite interesting to see such a language evolve. You can see with idioms in English that the meaning inverses (“blood is thicker than water”, “great minds think alike”) because people wanted that effect, or because they don’t know that these idioms actually mean “friends are more special than family” and “if two people come up with the same idea, they’re idiots”. Perhaps “when the walls fell” would eventually be dropped at some point by the same methodology, leaving “Darmok and Jalat” as just meaning “two enemies”.
Skull Giver on Lemmy with Knowledge!
Ok sure, but now tell me how to build a starship in this language.