HFQ Offical Snippet #4

runsforcelery wrote:
You guys are doing an awful lot of speculating on a very limited information base at the moment.

Just saying.

evilauthor wrote:You know, given that English is the only language that was supposed to be on Safehold, the mere fact that Kohdy wrote Spanish in his diaries would have rung alarm bells if any "Angel" learned of it. Never mind what he was writing about, just using Spanish would be a "forbidden knowledge" violation.

But of course, Spanish would only be recognizable as forbidden knowledge to someone who already knew about Spanish. To anyone else, Spanish would just look like particularly exotic code. Suspicious perhaps, but not automatically labeled as "forbidden".

Which is basically another example of how trying to forbid knowledge without actually telling what knowledge is actually forbidden is doomed to failure.

Edit: Also, I'm going to have to go with Spanish not being a dead language when the Federation fell and that Kohdy personally knew it. After all, why encode a journal in Spanish? Why not something more obscure or alien to English? Like Russian, or Chinese, or even Navajo?

evilauthor wrote:You know, given that English is the only language that was supposed to be on Safehold, the mere fact that Kohdy wrote Spanish in his diaries would have rung alarm bells if any "Angel" learned of it. Never mind what he was writing about, just using Spanish would be a "forbidden knowledge" violation.

But of course, Spanish would only be recognizable as forbidden knowledge to someone who already knew about Spanish. To anyone else, Spanish would just look like particularly exotic code. Suspicious perhaps, but not automatically labeled as "forbidden".

Which is basically another example of how trying to forbid knowledge without actually telling what knowledge is actually forbidden is doomed to failure.

Edit: Also, I'm going to have to go with Spanish not being a dead language when the Federation fell and that Kohdy personally knew it. After all, why encode a journal in Spanish? Why not something more obscure or alien to English? Like Russian, or Chinese, or even Navajo?

BobG wrote:[quote="isaac_newton
Without a grammer book & a good understanding, she would almost certainly end up with the completely wrong ideas.

I found that out the hard way doing latin translations at school - they ended up being almost 100% spurious - and I was really convinced I done a good job too

And the people who are saying "Gee whiz, surely they could have figured out something as simple as a foreign language' are way underestimating the difficulties in figuring out how to translate another language when the only one in existence (aside from the limited sections of a single document) is English. Different grammar, different verb forms, different sentence structure, different idiom, etc. Don't assume there were bunches of proper nouns which could provide cognates, at least for names, either.

Maybe tho it is just in hopes of a rousing, soul satisfying AHAH TOLDYA SO, I KNEW IT

OlorinNight wrote:I was already suffering (deeply) over the fact that I can't stop myself from reading again and again and again AND AGAIN David Weber's books while I still have hundreds (litterally hundreds) of books that I still have to open for the first time.

lyonheart wrote:Hi EvilAuthor,

Given all Federation humans had NEATS, learning a new language might not have been that hard, and keeping languages alive while English was the primary might have been part of some demonstrating their humanity and diversity in the face of the inevitable destruction by the Gbaba.

Until we get another snippet from RFC, our floundering will continue to amuse our story-dealer, so he might be merciful if we amuse him enough.

Putting a good or critical part of the book in Spanish might be a great publishing ploy, despite my lack of learning it since third grade.

Grabthar's Hammer wrote:I wonder if some of the Espanol text reads:

"Hola, me llamo Seijin Khody, tú mataste a mi padre, prepárate a morir..."

schoeffelk wrote:I vote that Merlin has OWL make a very old appearing simple 'Española' dictionary with common phrases, a basic grammar book and infuse them both with remotes. Merlin can then 'see' the writings as they attempt to translate them and search their convent for other artifacts. These books are given to Aivah for delivery to the Sisters.

My view on the crew status of Kohdy is agreement with him being this Universe's Harkness. He initially agreed with Langhorne then changed during the times of trouble. I believe that both Chihiro and Schuler were also early supporters who subtly and quietly changed their views during the conflict. I think the strike on Alexandria was the tipping point. Kohdy worked with them to protect some hidden assets/agenda.

SPOILER ALERT














There may be information on the construct/control of the OBS or even a communications back door in the journals, but all in Española!