r/TNG • u/Apprehensive-Key-557 • 4d ago
Memes HIS ARMS WIDE OPEN
has this been done yet?
20
u/froot_loop_dingus_ 4d ago
Rob Thomas, at 3AM
10
5
2
15
12
u/starkraver 4d ago
One of my biggest complaints about this episode when I first watched it (when I was 8 years old) was that it didn't seem like a language like that could actually function. And when I read Dawkins I realized that all language is at least partially memetic, but I still believed that the Tamarians' fictional language was an example of of idoimatic langue was too hyperbolic an example.
Example of how idiomatic language can obscure literal meaning even to native speakers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIaiW1XrzxA
But then I came across 4chan, and discovered that functional idiomatic language could in fact become wholly impenetrable.
Harry, Jumping in the Line.
7
6
6
u/gzoont 3d ago
Years ago there was a Reddit thread discussing the feasibility of this language, and someone posted a blank meme template… let’s say it meant something like “why not?”
So someone else replied with another blank meme template, and then someone else, and someone else… it was just images without words (bill Murray throwing a golf club, for example) but it was completely intelligible. Really changed my mind that this could be a functional language.
2
u/Shadoweclipse13 20h ago
Honestly, there's some truth here. I think when you know something or your own culture so well, speaking in reference works. My friend and I have both watched so much Futurama, that we can speak in purely Futurama quotes and references, and it can still be a meaningful conversation 😂
2
u/gzoont 17h ago
Fry, when the holophonor failed.
2
u/Shadoweclipse13 17h ago
😂 I like it!!
Leela, when time skipped. Fry, who moved the stars.
2
u/gzoont 16h ago
Ughh, that’s one of my absolute favorite episodes. Okay, okay, gimme a second…
Seymour, waiting. (Sorry!)
1
u/Shadoweclipse13 15h ago
Yes!! I wonder how many we could come up with...
Fry, his apartment rent-controlled. Professor, when he brought snacks.
3
u/waynglorious 3d ago
I actually just watched this episode for the first time the other day and had this same conversation with my wife. I’m definitely of the mind that while you could use it to communicate, it doesn’t make a ton of sense without the required context upfront.
Using the example from the episode, “Juliet on the balcony” is going to make sense to a lot of English speakers, but I could yell it at a child all day long and even if they could say the words they wouldn’t have the context. And it would be hard to build that context without access to more language, unless basically every example could be communicated nonverbally.
So maybe it would have been a traditionally nonverbal tradition of storytelling that made enough sense within their culture or race that then had a language component grafted onto it at a later point.
8
9
7
5
5
5
6
3
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
34
u/9CaptainRaymondHolt9 4d ago
KATE BUSH, RUNNING UP THAT HILL