• Infynis@midwest.social
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    11 months ago

    They can’t speak English though. In fact the scene this screenshot is from is them trapped in the past unable to communicate because their universal translators are offline. I would assume Quark speaks Federation Standard, but apparently that’s not close enough to English to figure out what they’re saying in the 40s

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I would assume Quark speaks Federation Standard

      I assume he made a clear point of never learning it.

      I’d put larger odds on Nog and Rom eventually learning it (but not at the time of the screenshot).

      • psmgx@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I could see Quark learning it. He lives in the federation, and fluency is good for business. Probably a RoA to that effect.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Hum… By the end of DS9 he lives in the federation. For nearly all of it he lives in Bajor, and shortly before it he lives in the Cardassian Empire.

          Yeah, I could see the Lower Decks version of him speaking it.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          He doesn’t live in the federation until the last episode, though. He lives on a Bajoran space station administrated by Starfleet.

    • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      One thing I’ve always wondered, and this is hardly the most unbelievable aspect of the science fiction elements of this show but it’s one of the most pervasive and constant; why don’t we ever hear the native languages of the aliens underneath the sounds of the universal translators? Most, although not all, of them speak by vibrating the air, so where are those sounds disappearing to?

      • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The translator also emits an interference pattern that cancels out the original speech to the listener

      • macniel@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        This was a plotpoint in DS9 where the UT didn’t picked up the nuances of a language but the mutants who were able to comprehend the language deciphered what was really meant.

      • timicin@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        fwiw: you do get to hear a little bit of ferengi in this episode, before they get their translators fixed

    • Apeman42@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I read a theory once that “daimon”, the Ferengi title for captain, could translate to “good/lead merchant” or something along those lines.

      So if we assume that’s true, it’s possible that “hewmon” means something like “shitty merchant”, and it’s just pure coincidence it basically sounds like human.

    • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Human is the one word they know in Federation Standard. They go out of their way to mispronounce it.

      • hessianerd@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I mean it is usually said with some distain in the voice. I had always thought it was some sort of pun or something.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    My headcanon is that most of their speech is ferengi being translated by the universal translator, but when they say the word human they just use the human word for human which then goes untranslated.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Makes sense considering we know from Darmok that the universal translator doesn’t translate proper names.

    • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      It’s not even head cannon, this screenshot is legit not just from the episode, but from the scene where there’s an example of exactly what you described.

  • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    They have the ability to pronounce ‘human’ correctly (e.g. “A human drink. It’s called root beer”). They choose to deliberately mispronounce it as an intimidation tactic.

  • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I love how your legit using a screenshot from a scene where this is explained lol.

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    Still less absurd than Data’s contractions (except all the times he actually used them). Maybe it was something he was programmed to tell humans so that even being superior to them, people would still be able to point to one thing they could do better.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Other way around, he made an effort to modify the universal translator so he could pronounce it like that. Damn hu-mons!

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    Can we all agree that Ferengi’s have the best drip in the galaxy? Quark’s outfits are always incredible.