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It's a peaceful life
(lemmy.nz)
TNG s5e2 " Darmok"
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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
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The thing is how would they have even constructed the phrases in the first place?
To use the word 'and' to construct the phrase in the first place, it already had to mean combining the two. Similarly "at" has to have the meaning to specificy the location. On top of Darmok, Jalad, and Tanagra all having names independent of the phrase.
We couldn't have done "Juliet on her balcony" without being able to understand what a balcony even is or Juliet independent of the scene. This also means we can take the larger narrative and break it down into that key piece for the metaphor.
Maybe instead they once had a language and it eroded away into just memes, but then how did they manage to synthesize "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" in the end?
I've thought about this way too much as well, and my belief is that they don't actually understand the individual words. The entire idiom conveys the idea, and the individual parts are lost etymology. Like how "bye" conveys a departure but you don't need to have a concept of God to understand it, even though it derives from "God be with you."
Ok, but then how to generate the new metaphor like they did to honor Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel?
Balls. Well, I guess we'll have to assume they understand "and" and "at" at the very least. In that case, new idioms of (person) at (place) could be created, but "Shaka, when the walls fell" would be an idiom from the language spoken beforehand.
And this is just my tortured excuse, but the premise falls apart otherwise.
Yeah, a fun premise but pretty damn near impossible to pull off while preserving the ability for the language to evolve to accommodate new stuff.