Всегда актуально
"...Because compatibility factors for communication are incredibly low. Take the Yiribians, who have enough knowledge to sail their triple-yoked poached eggs from star to star: they have no word for 'house', 'home', or 'dwelling'. 'We must protect our families and our homes.' When we were preparing the treaty between the Yiribians and ourselves at the Court of Outer Worlds, I remember that sentence took forty-five minutes to say in Yiribian. Their whole culture is based on heat and changes in temperature. We're just lucky that they do know what a 'family' is, because they're the only ones besides humans who have them. But for house you have to end up describing '...an enclosure that creates a temperature discrepancy with the outside environment of so many degrees, capable of keeping comfortable a creature with a uniform body temperature of ninety-eight-point-six, the same enclosure being able to lower the temperature during the months of the warm season and rise it during the cold season, providing a location where organic sustenance can be refrigerated in order to be preserved, or warmed well above the boiling point of water to pamper the taste mechanism of the indigenous habitant who, through customs that go back through millions of hot and cold seasons, have habitually sought out this temperature changing device...' and so forth and so on. At the end you have given them some idea of what a 'home' is and why it is worth protecting.
[but] Give them a schematic of the air-conditioning and central heating system and things begin to get through. Now: there is a huge solar-energy conversion plant that supplies all the electrical energy for the Court. The heat amplifying and reducing components take up an area a little bigger than Tarik. One Yiribian can slither through that plant and then go describe it to another Yiribian who never saw it before so that the-second can build an exact duplicate, even to the color the walls are painted - and this actually happened, because they thought we'd done something ingenious with one of the circuits and wanted to try it themselves - where each piece is located, how big it is, in short completely describe the whole business, - in nine words. Nine very small words, too,"
[...]"In English it would take a couple of books full of schematics and electrical and architectural specifications. They have the proper nine words. We don't."
Вэ те че об беглость мышления о различных предметных областях. "Скільки мов ти знаєш, стільки разів ти людина" (с)
Й, що характерно - різна людина
[but] Give them a schematic of the air-conditioning and central heating system and things begin to get through. Now: there is a huge solar-energy conversion plant that supplies all the electrical energy for the Court. The heat amplifying and reducing components take up an area a little bigger than Tarik. One Yiribian can slither through that plant and then go describe it to another Yiribian who never saw it before so that the-second can build an exact duplicate, even to the color the walls are painted - and this actually happened, because they thought we'd done something ingenious with one of the circuits and wanted to try it themselves - where each piece is located, how big it is, in short completely describe the whole business, - in nine words. Nine very small words, too,"
[...]"In English it would take a couple of books full of schematics and electrical and architectural specifications. They have the proper nine words. We don't."
Вэ те че об беглость мышления о различных предметных областях. "Скільки мов ти знаєш, стільки разів ти людина" (с)
Й, що характерно - різна людина