226
It's a peaceful life
(lemmy.nz)
TNG s5e2 " Darmok"
Newly pregnant couple, two lost in a hospital.
Picard, Riker, and Worf, their palms covering their faces.
Appreciate the callback to my earlier work.
Someone translate, please!
Never Gonna give you up. Never Gonna let you down.
My god look at those swell moves
Love the username!
There are 4 gifs!
Homer, thinking of potato chips.
When the walls fell
Once again, the langue makes no sense. Unless it evolved from regular speech patterns other species have. Because it would require children to have been born with knowledge they shouldn’t understand to begin speaking the language properly.
Stephenson goes for a more believable version of this concept in Diamond Age. The most common written language is pictograms, with a minority being able to read words. I suppose we could imagine the people then going from this stage to speaking the sounds associated with an image without understanding that the sounds form words with individual meaning.
The knowledge base has to be shared, yes. It's aggravating, but we can let it go for the sake of the memes.
https://imgur.com/picard-visits-gif-subreddit-c2meXJO
Classic from /r/highqualitygifs
Amazing
Wondrous.
From 2 years back.
Data with Tasha: his fly open.
I think the Tamarians must have a second, more literal language to describe the events the metaphors are about, because you don't understand a metaphor unless you know the story behind it. For example, saying some event is someone's Waterloo only makes sense if you know Waterloo was the site of Napoleon's final defeat. To know "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is about working together, you have to know that they worked together.
Not sure i entirely agree, i think you could conceivably teach someone the meaning of a saying without conveying its origin, through sheer repetition in context.
Isn't that how we came up with language in the first place? Point at a stone and make one specific grunting noise. Grugzug, your fellow caveman, will eventually connect the two if you keep doing it
And i also just thought of the fact that we have plenty of sayings in everyday use, that the people using them can rarely place in their correct historical context. Take Romeo and Juliet, to this day people think of romance first and foremost. And not fucked up teenage suicide and silly blood feuds.
I concur. I am not a young person. And yet, I have an idea of what "rule" means in the title of a shitpost, and I shouldn't even know what "shitpost" means. I have never seen a formal definition for either of them. I don't think "rule" (in that context) even has a rigid definition yet. The meaning isn't just communicated by example; it is being invented by example.
I still feel like there has to be a really big turtle at the bottom who is not standing on another turtle. Words that mean things in themselves. But I've never been there.
The whole point was that they communicated through metaphor, which they aren't doing if they simply memorize the sounds. That would make "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" the literal words that mean "working together" like words in any language. To speak in metaphors they don't have to know the whole story, but they at least have to know it's a reference to two people working together.
The Tamarian language is like C++ whilst normal language is binary, or assembly. Sure, all C++ is based on assembly and assembly is based on binary, but once you've invented a higher-level language, you're not gonna have much patience for lower-level languages anymore; that's for the compiler to worry about. You might still use binary - or, more realistically, hexadecimal - for limited purposes like RGB codes, but outside of that it's all higher-level, baby.
We can learn C++ without without knowing binary because we have C++ documentation written in human languages. Likewise, the Tamarians need a non-metaphorical language to explain their metaphors.
They have it. "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" contains the words "and" and "at". Other phrases include words like "his", "eyes", "opened", "when", "the", "walls", "fell", "on", "ocean", etc. That's the binary. What's interesting is that they seem incapable of understanding binary on its own anymore, and only know C++.
Indeed, they would require a base knowledge and more straightforward means to initially communicate.
I've actually started doing this to cut down on my use of swearing. Having to take a moment to think of an appropriate metaphor for the company I'm in and not blurt out a convenient "FUCK" helps me not get so stressed about the little things that go wrong.
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
226 points (99.1% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
7525 readers
834 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS