Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

‘Babel-17,’ she said. ‘I haven’t solved it yet, General Forester.’

Babel-17 is a language itself which we do not understand.’

implanted fangs, could not deal with a plosive labial unless it was voiced.

‘You can really judge a pilot by watching him wrestle?’

‘some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can’t give to a live human being.’

can talk better to people I can wrestle with.

To get a good pilot you watch him wrestle.

‘Modern warfare can be fought on so many delightfully different levels,’

did you know the emotional unit in writing is the paragraph?

Sixteen cases to the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by with only singular and plural.

If there’s no word for it, how do you think about it?

Thinking in Babel-17 was like suddenly seeing through water at the bottom of a well that a moment ago you thought had only gone down a few feet.

by a clot of tiny singing sounds on an area of her tongue smaller than a coin: Babel-17.

‘You know any language where there’s no word for “I”?’

there are certain ideas which have words for them. If you don’t know the words, you can’t know the ideas.

The best way to learn a language is by listening to it. So listen.

You frighten me because you rob banks and put knife handles in people’s heads,

The maddening feeling that her English words took so long on her tongue!

Then a vibra-blast stung the metal hatch beneath her hand.

can’t solve the problem.”