Stargates & diplomatic incidents

[gryphonrhi]

Okay, I may be working from fanon here, but the SGA eps seem to support this.  As I understand it, the gates in Pegasus and (after some reprogramming by Sam?) the Milky Way will teach you the spoken forms of a planet/moon's language as you go through.  Not the written language, and not the societal mores/customs/tells, but you'll be able to

Comments

[sinanju]

Ah, no, I didn't mean it that way at all. Sorry if it came across that way.

My point was just that if you can't come up with a _good_ way of dealing with an issue like how everyone can speak to one another on all these different worlds, you might better off just glossing over it. And the 'gate as universal translater' idea is, as you point out, problematic.

The easiest approach might be if the gates gifted everyone with knowledge of a single language, presumably the Ancient language is it was spoken by the gate builders themselves. That could be built into the gate's operation. That dispenses with the translation issue, and the issue of languages changing over time, and the range of the translation effect. But that brings up its own problems. It means anyone who ever used a gate could communicate--but there are lots of aliens on other worlds who haven't personally done so, so we're still back at mutual incomprehensibility. Plus, it would mean anyone who has traveled by gate could speak Ancient, and that's clearly not the case.

Although, if the gate gifted everyone with some other language, some 'trade language' instead of Ancient, that might work. I'm not sure why the Ancients would do that, though, unless they didn't _want_ people to automatically gain knowledge of Ancient. Maybe a security measure?

[gryphonrhi]

Fair enough, hence the FYI.

And yeah, either teach everyone Ancient or something like the old Koine Greek that was a trade tongue. It would make more sense, and thanks for the suggestion!