[166/365] linguistbabble

[cosmolinguist]

It's been so long since the first season of Strange New Worlds that I forget that now Star Trek has Linguistbabble in the same way it has Technobabble.

"It's an obscure dialect, but I can work out the syntax..."

I wish I could be a science-ficitony linguist, where you just hear or see some language and stare into the middle distance for the briefest of moments, maybe mutter to yourself slightly, and then you speak unfaltering full sentences, in perfect idiomatic English, which probably further the plot in a dramatic way.

(And, as a friend of mine pointed out when I complained about this, the sentences often rhyme! In English!)

There's a tumblr screenshot I'll never find again that does a great job of depicting what linguists are actually like. I think they're deciphering some archeological inscription in this case and it's all mumbling and ellipses and "the-man-he-walks-to...wait, this language doesn't distinguish verbs and adjectives does it...this word means 'thousand'...unless it's 'cake'..."

Basically, if you do a month of Duolingo and then try to read a newspaper in that language, it should feel more like that.

Comments

[liv]

Did you see Arrival? A large chunk of the plot is about how understanding alien language is actually incredibly hard. They also put thought into the idea that assumptions based on human languages (even as far as you can generalize) would not be applicable for actual aliens.

[sfred]

I loved that (story and film).

[cosmolinguist]

I love Arrival. It is very much better than most sci-fi linguists. :)