#doctor who linguistics

[ihavestolenyourkneecaps]

So, I tried to translate what was in the new sonic screwdriver with the Sherman's Gallifreyan.

And it's a bunch of non sense, it thanslates to "the bonguj fgifeet the nefechachp fa the otshavvi the bepnefeba fa".

There are some letters that are ambiguous "the bonguj fgife(e?)t the nef(e?)chachp f(a/e?) the otsha(vi/vvi?) the b(e?)pnef(e?)b(a/i?) f(a/e?)".

Taking the frase that is ment to be "the sharpness of the tongue defeats the sharpness of the warrior", the writing becomes:

Which is doesn't looks like the sonic, just the 4 "the"s that are equal, and it's supposed to be written in Kinyarwanda, also known as Ikinyarwanda or Urunyarwanda, that's the language spoken in Rwanda, but the meaning that the show gives us translates to "ubukana bwururimi butsinda ubukana bwintwali".

Which is nowhere close to the writing in the sonic.

With that said, I think the people who made the sonic searched a little in the fandom for our way to write in gallifreyan and then took what they found pretty and merged together because it looks like gallifreyan and the system is 99% Sherman's Gallifreyan but there are some discrepancies.

If you look in the second symbol what was supposed to be "ngu" is written wrong, the circle has 4 lines but the maximum amount is 3, I consider that to be "ng" + "u" because normally we would merged together the line of the "u" with another symbol of take it to the border or merged it with one of the lines in the "ng".

You can see as well in the third that between the "fe" and the "b" there's something, I read that as and "e" but it doesn't really makes sense if you consider that it has before it another "e", when there are doubles of a letter we just make it twice.

The sixth and eleventh are equally strange, it seems to be an "f" with something, it could be an "o" but it's too big and not close enough to the border, the only one I could think that its close enough it's the "a", because it's quirk is that it's always far but for the outside, this one is "far" but for the inside.

The eighth it's as well interesting, in what was supposed to be a "vi" the way is written makes it look live a "vvi". And the last, the tenth has what looks like a "ba" but looks like it has a dot in it but there aren't any single dots only two or three dots, so I just ignored it.

And I'm not even gonna talk about the slashed "e"s because that formed a pattern and I just assumed it's on propose.

In conclusion, or I'm dumb and can't read or they just put something inspired in the Sherman's Gallifreyan to look pretty and make us go slightly crazy but in the end it's just the the normal gallyfean that doesn't means a single thing.

Ps: sorry for any wrong words or terms, I'm brazilian and my english isn't perfect.

EDIT: I'M DUMB, thank you @mesimees and @typeforty for explaining the actual way of reading this, @mesimees rebloged this with a pretty simple explanation on how really to read this, thank you for the correction and it's really fucking awesome to discuss conlangs linguistics

[linguistwho]

Here's my take on "The sharpness of the tongue defeats the sharpness of the warrior"

With stylization to resemble how the original is engraved onto the new Sonic.

I also found it interesting how the original is read from the outside in, so I tried one with that technique.

I really like it, honestly, and I might have to try using it for other projects in the future.

[bisexualamy]

thinking again about the idea that gallifreyan would have temporal pronouns that references an individual time lord ‘in general’ as opposed to referencing a specific rengeneration. and how the gallifreyan language probably has complex verb tenses or conjugations around not when events take place in the timestream but also tenses relating to where two time lords are in relation to each other.

in this vein, i love the idea that gallifreyan has three conjugations or words for the concept of “i can’t do or tell you that”:

“i am physically unable to do that / I don’t have the info you need”

“i am choosing to withhold this information and/or not do this / i promised i would not do or reveal this”

“i cannot tell you or do this because it would violate the laws of time / it gives you too much foreknowledge / it’s likely to cause a paradox”

while #1 and #2 can intersect, it makes sense to me that #3 would be its own separate concept or word. that it’s not just that you’re choosing to withhold something: you are bound by the laws of time to withhold it. you may badly, desperately, want to help this person change their future, but you know doing so could cause incredible damage to the timestream. “i’m so sorry. if it were up to me, i would tell you, but the universe won’t allow me to say.”

[bipunkharrington]

"It was the wrong anagram" okay but actually Sue Tech to Sutekh is a homonym not an anagram so it's actually wrong linguistic effect

[marlinspirkhall]

[weirdlizard26]

why are doctor's companions always attractive young women. next time he should pick up a weird little middle aged linguistics professor dude

[nostalgia-tblr]

oh u like lokius do u? decline it in all six cases then.

[tower-of-hana]

I thought Ncuti Gatwa was pronounced /ɲuti ɡatwa/ because nc is pronounced /ɲ/ in one of my conlangs. It's so conlover.

[benthetable]

Time Lords' languages must have some wild tense systems

Like, do they have a tense for if something is a fixed point in time? What about something you remembered happening a certain way but you changed the timeline so it didn't actually happen?

[ayakashibackstreet]

I need to protect my 60-something year old professor from this weird guy sitting in the back and being a real pain. What is his problem? Leave my little guy alone

[le-guin]

i made the spanish joke in the tags but i am quite firmly Not engaging with the doctor's line that all humans speak that same language at whatever future point they travel to, given how much that violates human nature and social development and everything that makes us people 🙂‍↔️ I do not see it

[ace-whovian-neuroscientist]

The existence of the chameleon circuit and chameleon arch implies that there is at least one species of fauna on Gallifrey that is capable of active camouflage. And the fact that the word chameleon was chosen by the translation circuit suggests that this species is sufficiently more lizard-like than any of the other species capable of active camouflage on Earth. Or perhaps that species is just the most commonly referenced for camouflage, like how the chameleon isn't necessarily the best at active camouflage in comparison to say, cuttlefish. Either way I am intrigued by a linguistic convergence where a species name is synonymous for camouflage function.

[linguistwho]

Word of the Day - Day 1838: Boop

[wandering-alien]

Ok so I've been wanting to ramble a tiny bit about universal translators for a while so here ya go. It's a bit incoherent but hopefully someone will find it interesting.

So of course they're translating a huge range of languages, but even if you compare two relatively similar Earth languages, they bring up some interesting questions. Let's take English and German (and bear in mind I am not a linguist):

In English, we tend to have all the verbs near the start of the sentence/clause, even in past and future tenses i.e. 'I had been sleeping in my bed.' or 'I will go to the restaurant.'

In the German past perfect tense, the auxiliary verb is the second 'idea' or 'part' of the sentence/clause and the past participle is at the end of that sentence/clause i.e. 'Ich habe in meinem Bett geschlafen.' In the future tense, using the verb 'werden' and the infinitive, it's the same: 'Ich werde ins Restaurant gehen.'

This means that, in German, as an English speaker, sometimes you have to read/listen to the whole sentence first, before properly translating it, because one of the verbs is in a completely different place to where it is in English (and vice versa).

Now, a universal translator translates as someone is speaking, but there would be a significant delay, right? Because the sentence structures are different (and we're talking about English and German here, imagine English and Vulcan) there would have to be a reasonably large delay for the translator to get the message across in a normal way to the other person. I mean, it has to wait for basically the time it takes to say a sentence as well as however long it takes to actually translate (but I imagine that would be pretty quick).

I don't really know what all this is meant to mean/says about universal translators, I guess just that it must take longer than it seems on Star Trek and it would still be a pain having people who speak radically different languages working together on a ship (which is a shame).

HOWEVER.

In Doctor Who, the TARDIS' universal translator is psychic. In the words of the 9th Doctor: "a telepathic field that gets inside your brain- translates." So I reckon there doesn't need to be a delay there because the words/idea is in your head so the translator can work with that?

I have no idea how it works in Star Trek, I haven't watched all of the tv shows and films so maybe it gets explained more, but it doesn't seem psychic. Idk, maybe it is, in which case the same applies.

The other thing I find interesting is how it would basically be a massive AI but I think I'll talk about that in another post.

[inalucky]

there's such a long list of interests and hobbies i've wished i pursued for years but never started. even the hobbies i have i hardly partake in because i'm constantly simultaneously exhausted and restless. i don't even do my schoolwork most of the time; the once in a while that i can force myself to do something it's that. i have all this curiosity and interest and people used to say i was so smart and i'm letting all my passion rot away but it doesn't feel like i can physically do anything else.