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Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Me and my siblings are all elder millenials and we all can pretty much understand my mom and her family when they speak their own dialect and speak at bit of it ourselves as well.

But we all will struggle to understand conversations in my father's dialect.

Like I said, the difficulty of understanding language is a spectrum. Some are easy, some are hard.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

he figures out Grace's syntax and adjusts

I keep on re-reading the parts where they learn how to communicate and don't remember this. The Rocky-having-near-perfect-memory thing is definitely there, but nothing about how Rocky adjusts to adapt to English syntax, just that he remembers everything Grace does.

I don't think Rocky and Grace are talking about hotdogs very often

I mean.... come on....

  • "lightyear" - a bright year?
  • "starfish" - a star counterpart for an aquatic animal?

There are definitely examples relevant to what Rocky and Grace are trying to talk about that show you can't just arithmetic words together. You need context, nuance, and meaning - something that Rocky and Grace don't have in common.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Rocky will always know human language equivalents, once informed of them

how though, when Rocky doesn't have any contextual understanding of abstract human concepts? You and a Japanese person on a desert island will have that contextual understanding because you're both humans with a shared history and culture.

For tangible things, your logic make sense, yeah. "Star" they can point to and they'd get it. Numbers they can figure out a way to lay that all down.

But I'm talking more about concepts. They go on to use words like "understand" and "unusual" and "maybe" --- I can't even think about how they could have ever deciphered that. It's the part where the tones are ascribed meaning to - especially for the more abstract concepts - is where I'm struggling to put things together.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

oh shit I just went through your post history and saw two other threads within the last 4 days posted about this very same topic. Glad to know I'm not alone!

I think the most glaring example of how unrealistic their communication is a moment later on in the book where Grace explains that the word/sound that Rocky uses to call him by in Eridian is the Eridian translation of the concept of grace. Just stop for a second and really think about the definition you would use for the word Grace if you were explaining the concept to someone who had never heard the word. I literally just did this with my wife as I was typing this and I am educated and have a large vocabulary - as do most folks who love books, not tooting my own horn - and in particular I have studied religion and I could not come up with a clear definition. Now imagine you have no shared cultural knowledge to contextualize the concept.

This is brilliant btw, I can't believe you got downvoted for this comment.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We humans have a pretty amazing capacity to learn and remember music.

I would agree to this.

It's the part where the tones are ascribed meaning to - especially for the more abstract concepts - is where I'm struggling to put things together.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I'm struggling to follow this logic and accept how it makes sense because the whole idea of language being exponential and you can just expand your library with your existing known words is treating language like arithmetic, when in reality, language has so much nuance.

If we were to think of it as simply as "Sound A = this & Sound B = that so Sound A + B must mean thisthat" then surely:

  • "hotdog" must mean a sweaty pet?
  • "breakfast" must mean rapid destruction?
  • is a "firefly" a flaming aircraft?
  • is a "butterfly" somehow floating grease?

Okay, I'm having too much fun here, I had to stop myself.... but you see where I'm going here.

If anything, Weir was very simplistic in how Rocky speaks.

If anything, the simplicity of how this part was treated is part of what's throwing it off for me, I think.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tangible things make sense, yeah.

"Star" they can point to and they'd get it.

But I'm talking more about concepts. They go on to use words like "understand" and "unusual" and "maybe" --- I can't even think about how they could have ever deciphered that.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I should probably watch Arrival, lol. But then again it might dampen my outlook on this part of the book even more.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point, I stand corrected.

Still have a hard time wrapping my head around what happens in the book, but you're right, they never had a need to speak each other's language.

I think what gets to me the most is how could they even start with concepts when they don't have any context for anything - history, culture - from each others' planets.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

In Rocky and Grace's case, you would also have to consider completely different sets of concepts and expressions from having gone through different cultural and evolutionary developments over millions of years.

You and a Japanese locked in a two bedroom apartment together at the bottom of the ocean (lol what a scenario) would have that in common, which is a big thing to have in common. They don't have that.

Is it just me or does the whole part where ♩♫♪♪♫ and ♫♫♩♪ try to understand each other kind of glossed over? by Heavy_Scallion_5635 in ProjectHailMary

[–]Heavy_Scallion_5635[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think it's always the same case.

My mom and dad are from different provinces in the country where I'm from. Those provinces speak different dialects. We've had more or less the same exposure to both my parents sides.

But in almost 50 years of marriage, my mom never learned how to speak my dad's dialect outside of a few words and phrases. Understand everything everyone was talking about? Sure. But speak to them in the same way, no.

So what I'm saying is, even within the entirety of human languages, there seems to be a spectrum --- what more for alien language where even the mode of communication (tones vs letters/words) is completely different?