to-reach-the-farthest-star:

lyricwritesprose:

mewiet:

beccaland:

dwgif:

– Do you have to start every sentence with “Chan”? + Chan, yes, tho. – And end every sentence with… + Chan, tho, tho. 

This is one of my favorite sci-fi linguistic innovations, though. Turn-taking in conversation is a big deal, so it makes total sense to me that a politeness-conscious culture would have developed a language function for clearly demarking the beginning and end of turns. It’s simple and brilliant. Unlike a lot of sci-fi language flourishes, it makes sense. It makes me wonder about other aspects of Chantho’s culture and language. Like, if you’re quoting someone, I bet you would mark the beginning and end of the quote with the author/speaker’s name, embedded within your own. 

Reblogging for beccaland’s fascinating commentary.

Note, also, that Chantho comes from a hive—which, if we’re using the word literally, means a community of many genetically similar females.  Which means that in some situations, identity tags would be extremely useful to sort out all those similar voices.  Besides, if you live in a large group, having quick and easy name reminders is very functional.  It encourages socialization; no awkward “remembering names” nonsense, if you’re having a conversation with someone, they’ll tell you.  It might help reserved individuals, or those with memory disabilities, access the larger social world.  It might increase peoples’ ability to relate to strangers—I mean, you can’t know everyone in the hive, but if you’re talking to them, you can know their name.  In other words, it may be conducive to group harmony, which is highly important to any hive.

#this is one of my all time favorite doctor who moments#1) because it’s martha and obviously martha is my everything so automatically i love it#2) this was one of the first episodes of doctor who i saw. i only saw the beginning because my mom was watching#and i eventually went to my room or just left or something. i don’t remember. BUT i saw this scene#and i was like ’…that’s genius’ since it’s genius in that a writer thought of this for the language of a fictional alien species#and because that’s just genius in general since you always know when people are done talking#and you won’t ever accidentally interrupt someone because you thought they were finished when they weren’t#and all the other reasons added to this post make this scene even better