(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

[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.