(no subject)

[gfish]

Random thought on how to portray a civilization as beyond ancient: make its technical verbs irregular.

I grep the file.
She greps the file.
I grood the file yesterday.
They grode the file last month.
The file was greppen.

Comments

[ionan.livejournal.com]

"Man, did you see that file? That shit was greppen!!

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

ROTFL

Bap!

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Too damn geeksilly!

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the Douglas Adams bit, early on in the "Restaurant" book, where he described the need for entirely new verb tenses for languages spoken by time-traveling civilizations. I don't remember the exact text, and it seemed like a quick throwaway paragraph buried in the larger story, but I though it was utterly brilliant.

[maribou]

I am simultaneously amused and mildly embarrassed that when I read this post my first reflexive thought was "I really think that should be 'The file was gropped'."

Not saying I'm correct in any way, and realizing that misses the point of the post - just amused that that was my first instinctive thought.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

That looks too much like 'the file was groped', which would make it an entirely different kind of file...

You grood the file?

[avicado.livejournal.com]

Did I err?


Cheese dip!!!