Language
As mentioned in an earlier section, the Gorn have a
highly developed sense of smell/taste as well as a
natural ability to control the release of
pheromones/Hormones. These natural traits have led to a
fascinating language being developed.
The Gorn
language is actually two separate languages, a spoken
language and a written language. The reason for this is
that in the spoken language not only is sound and body
language used, like in all other languages, but also
scent.
It is this
element of scent that has worked to create some
interesting aspects in Gorn society as well as their
language and it explains early misunderstandings between
the Gorn and Humans. In the case of first contact with
the Gorn, the universal translator had trouble with the
Gorn language and human linguists could not understand
why. Words that seemed to have no meaning or a twisted
meaning would pop up and throw the entire translation
into a tailspin. This stemmed from a problem the Gorn
had in the development of their language.
You see as
the Gorn developed spoken language the use of scent was
a natural thing for them, and so it was added without
thought. However as progress began the Gorn sought ways
to record their language for future generations. So a
second language was born, new words where created to
describe the scent element that was missing and this new
language was used for written material. As technology
marched on and transmitted information was more common
the written language was further adopted to allow it to
work for voice transmissions. It was the extra words
that described the scent element that cause the
confusion in early attempts to translate.
However as
any linguist can explain, language is core than a way to
communicate, it can also define many aspects of a
culture, and in the case of the Gorn it did lead to some
interesting social conventions. The most well know is
that Gorn do not lie. This is not a social or moral
decision. With a language where the body chemistry of
the speaker can be easily determined the ability to lie
was greatly curtailed. Even with their excellent control
over the scent release, a Gorn is unable to exercise
total control and as such lies would be easily detected.
So over the centuries the concept of deception, in the
sense we understand, disappeared. To a Gorn a lie is the
withholding of information. This particular attitude has
led to some interesting situations when diplomatic
relations where held with the Gorn.
The lack
of deception in their society also led to an attitude of
handling things head on. When you do not like something
you don’t skirt it, you fix it. When something threatens
you, you don’t scare it off, you kill it. This is has
lead to a great deal of confusion on the Gorn part,
where human handling of race relations are concerned.
The Gorn feel that a problem should be dealt with
directly. The attitude of saber rattling or long
diplomatic discussions seems a waste. Especially when
they look at Human history and see that in most case the
end result was not a solution at all and the problem
eventually had to be dealt with anyway. So we end
up with a Gorn race that is extremely straightforward
and totally truthful. However the Gorn can also be tight
lipped. Their use of scent in their language has led to
a great deal of interest in privacy. This extends not
only to their personal lives, but to their society as
well. Early encounters with alien races have not gone
well. To date the Gorn have encountered four different
species in their space explorations, wars have been
fought with all of them. One race was even destroyed due
to these wars. This has left the Gorn feeling
threatened, when combined with their limited resource
availability for their area of space. When added to
their direct approach to life, the Gorn are extremely
protective of what is theirs. (A good analogy is to
compare the Gorn to 1980s Israel. Threatened on all
sides and willing to do whatever it took to survive.)
A final
area that the Gorn language has made an interesting
impact in is the area of entertainment. Most races
gradually developed recorded and mass broadcast
entertainment, the Gorn did not. They felt that by
losing the scent element the entertainment was shallow
and empty. As such the live arts thrive on Gorn worlds
and starships. Every Gorn ship actually has a small
amphitheatre built within it for entertainment. Gorn
plays and concerts are major events, held regularly. The
Gorn have nothing that equates with recorded music or
movies.
Note: This
has actually begun to change over the last few months.
Gorn technology has developed a holographic projection
system that also includes scent within it as well as
using force fields to make objects solid. Early forms of
this are now being used on Gorn command vessels however;
private industries are researching a way to make it more
accessible to the general public.
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