this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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That episode always kinda bothered me, because the universal translator was able to make English phrases out of it, which suggests a base language that would have to exist for the Tamarians themselves to understand their language. Surely, they could have shared some set of learning matirials that they would use to educate their young?
How would the Tamarians ever develop any advanced technology? Can you imagine an engineering discussion in Tamarian? Like, what is the word for capacitor? "Edward, when he enclosed conductive foil and electrolyte in a metal cylinder"? What would a Tamarian technical manual even look like?
I mean, they seem to have basic grammar for items and people and actions ("eyes", "walls", "fell"), it's possible that they only use that weird allegory reference pattern when speaking formally to strangers or whatever. It's also possible that their language in the original version makes more sense and is more practical and it just gets mangled by the universal translator.
It seems like an awfully bad idea to use a communication method that doesn't transfer what you mean if you have a better option available.
I doubt that's the case. I don't see how a non-metaphor based language would get turned into a metaphor based one through a software bug. Some big hand waving would need to happen for that.
IMO the Tamarians probably have brains that are structurally different such that their metaphors come far more naturally.