I thought this video was absolutely fascinating throughout, even the ad.
The main thrust of it is about how natural Earth languages make use of idiom and metaphor frequently, and how Tamarian is subtly different from this. But we do also make use of a similar direct literary allusion, to different degrees in different languages. Mandarin has a number of examples, but we can also point to “crossing the Rubicon” as an example in English.
More recently, the use of memes has taken on a very Tamarian-like role.
The thing that confuses me about this wonderful concept is how did the Tamarians ever get to the point of building wooden ships if they only spoke in meme and metaphor? How could they have created a culture that speaks only in references if their references couldn’t happen without culture existing to make note of the referenced events?
I assume that they didn’t always speak that way, but as their language evolved it became gradually more dense with allusions, until they took over entirely.
