Presented with a bewildering array of nouns like this, Is this a banana, or some really kinky ninja sex toy? What would you do with a symbol like this: The first was close, the second, not even.
#The noun project similar portable
The first thing that actually came to my mind when I saw these were a portable medkit from Duke Nukem 3D, and joss sticks. The meaning and the concept would have to be taught, and thus would, in effect, be no more valuable as an ideograph than “อาหาร” or “食” or “manĝo”. Symbols like this are pretty straightforward:īut even these would have little meaning in a culture not familiar with chopsticks or the red cross. The river Temarc, in winter!: “Hold your tongue!”īut how do you say something like “Move that lever to the second position from the top, and then tighten that nut one-quarter turn”? This glaring plot hole doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the episode and the delightful linguistic idea, but it illustrates that context is everything.Mirab, with sails unfurled: “Let’s get out of here.”.Sokath, his eyes uncovered: “Understanding! He gets it!”.Temba, his arms open: “Here, take this.”.They realize, however, that content is valueless without context anyone unfamiliar with Romeo and Juliet would have no idea what the metaphor referred to.Įven though Picard was able to speak to the Tamarians and deflect hostilities between the two races with the few phrases he had learned, there are some logical gaps in the premise.
As the episode progresses, the Enterprise team learns in various ways that the Tamarians communicate solely via metaphor, as though “Juliet on her balcony” were being used to express the concept of love, or beauty, or desire. Lungha, her sky grey.”Ī headscratcher, to be sure. The Tamarians were just such a race their opening dialog with the Enterprise went like this:
Imagine a race of people who communicates solely by metaphor. To illustrate what the project is up against, let’s look at an example from one of my favorite Star Trek TNG episodes, “Darmok”. I’m not dissing it for its own sake, nor am I wishing it failure. While I love linguistic innovation and would love to see either Terran Standard or a Universal Translator à la Star Trek, based on the minimal penetration of experiments like Esperanto or even the linguistic behemoth English, I’m not certain a project like this will ever have more than a niche impact.įirst, let me re-iterate: It’s a lovely idea. Recently happened across a video promoting The Noun Project, an effort to build a global visual language.
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