Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?
Countless threads asking for shows similar to other shows.
Aw, let's give the guy a break this time. It's a legitimate question and this particular show chose to ignore it rather than handwave it.
I always envisioned that originally, the language barrier was just like what we see in the movie. After the events of the movie, Daniel learned the Abydonian language, which is the same as that of the Goa'uld. He also taught some of the Abydonians English, which is why Skaara and the others can speak it when "Children of the Gods" rolls around.
When the team SG-1 is first established, in most of the encounters where people appear to be speaking English, they are actually speaking either
1) the Goa'uld tongue, a common trade language due to frequent contact with gate travelers
Note that Jack has a start from his exposure to Abydos and Sam is an all-around genius, so they can pick it up pretty fast. Daniel and Teal'c are already fluent and can translate where needed.
Would be used in the first few seasons in "COTG", "Bloodlines", "Cor-Ai", "There But for the Grace...", "Within the Serpent's Grasp", "The Serpent's Lair", "Need", "Family", "Secrets", "The Tok'ra", "Serpent's Song", "Holiday", "Out of Mind", "Into the Fire", "Point of View", "Rules of Engagement", "Forever in a Day", "Jolinar's Memories", and "The Devil You Know". Also possibly certain episodes like "Brief Candle", "Deadman Switch" and "Pretense", assuming they're not just speaking English in the latter two anyway.
or they're speaking
2) a native tongue, which is almost always derived from an Earth language.
Note that Daniel is a genius with languages, can figure out any given tongue in a short time, and can translate for the others when needed.
Would be used in the first few seasons in "Emancipation", "The Broca Divide", "The First Commandment", "Thor's Hammer", "Prisoners", "Thor's Chariot", "Past and Present", "A Hundred Days", and "New Ground". Possibly "Demons" too, although the natives could be speaking the Goa'uld tongue or even some archaic form of English. Anyway, this is really not a great number compared to the total number of episodes.
In all other episodes, either
1) the aliens have their own means to learn English or otherwise communicate,
2) there was enough contact prior to the episode to establish a means of communication, or
3) no alien speech is ever involved in the episode.
This just about works for the first few seasons if you squint real hard and ignore things like the fact Daniel is not always on hand to translate for the others. Or the fact that the Abydonian language in the movie is nothing at all like the Goa'uld speech on the show.
I've always assumed that this explanation breaks down after the first few seasons due to too many of the above discrepancies or at least an increasingly improbable number of languages for Daniel to translate to the rest of the team. But a quick look at seasons 4 and 5 show me only two of those, "Scorched Earth" and "Red Sky." Perhaps I should look at all 10 seasons from this perspective. (Obviously Jonas, Dr. Rothman, etc. are considered to substitute for Daniel at the appropriate times.)
Is it possible that my handwaving can work (more or less) for the whole run of the show?
