Darmok and Jalad

[turboether]

When David fought Goliath, Smiling Pepe in a Toupee, John Lennon has fallen in love with Yoko Ono

[Noomz]

Was rewatching the Tamarian episode of Star Trek TNG and have to say I can't imagine trying to communicate with a race that communicates the way the Tamarians do. Just imagine a race that speaks entirely by allegory and metaphore. Would you be able to communicate with them if you didn't know what they were doing?

[video=youtube;3-wzr74d7TI]https:eo]

[Schattenlied]

What if you turn an image based meme into a text based one?

Willy Wonka leaning on his hand.

Brian, wearing sweater.

Henry and Tommy at the bar.

As I said about Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, the words are a reference, the title of something that happened, meaningless unless someone has witnessed the imagery being referenced... Unless someone takes the time to explain the missing imagery being referenced by giving context for the situation in which it happened, something we, with our complete language are capable of doing, and they are not.

I stand by my statement of it not being a functional, possible language, because they entirely lack the ability to give context for the reference to someone who doesn't already know it, and have no way to explain new concepts to people (which means the chances of them ever advancing to an interstellar civilization, let alone anywhere near it, are all but impossible).


You say "Willy Wonka leaning on his hand", to someone who doesn't know who Willy Wonka is, or why he was leaning on his hand, what do the words mean to them? Absolutely nothing, but you can explain it to them using our language. The alien race in this episode can say "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra", but as in this episode, if they come across someone who doesn't know who Darmok and Jalad are, doesn't know where or what Tanagra is, or what Darmok and Jalad did there, they have no way to provide context through their language and thus the reference statement is meaningless.