"It rains!"
Jun. 23rd, 2011 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatPellinor has long claimed that the best way to recognise a primitive civilisation is to listen to what they say when they ask you to follow them to meet their leader. If they merely intone "Come!" they are a primitive people who are ruled by robe-wearing elders, and there is a risk that they will take superstitious exception to your electronic transpondulator, and try to burn you as a witch. If they say "Come with me," they probably have transpondulators of their own, although they may well pose different dangers.
However, the flaw in his theory is that you have to make contact before you can carry out this test. By the time you've heard their "Come!" you are already committed to following your primitive chap to his elders. Fortunately, there is another way to test how primitive your culture is, which can be done merely by listening to the conversation of the natives. It starts raining. "It rains!" cries the primitive culture; "it's raining," says the advanced one. The arrival of a friend is reported. "He comes!" says the primitive peasant. "He's coming," says the advanced one.
What remains to investigate is precisely when this linguistic change happens in the course of a civilisation's technological development. Does it come just before steam engines? Is it a vital development without which a civilisation cannot create computers? And, if so, please can we start researching what new linguistic change is necessary before we can successfully invent transporters?
However, the flaw in his theory is that you have to make contact before you can carry out this test. By the time you've heard their "Come!" you are already committed to following your primitive chap to his elders. Fortunately, there is another way to test how primitive your culture is, which can be done merely by listening to the conversation of the natives. It starts raining. "It rains!" cries the primitive culture; "it's raining," says the advanced one. The arrival of a friend is reported. "He comes!" says the primitive peasant. "He's coming," says the advanced one.
What remains to investigate is precisely when this linguistic change happens in the course of a civilisation's technological development. Does it come just before steam engines? Is it a vital development without which a civilisation cannot create computers? And, if so, please can we start researching what new linguistic change is necessary before we can successfully invent transporters?
