One thing that really bugs me about this episode is how it implies that Ferengi culture does not value education. Even going as far to show that Nog is illiterate. And that the noble Federation child had to teach him how to read. If you think about it the Ferengi culture would value literacy highly. Being able to write, read, and understand contracts would be a necessary skill. An illiterate Ferengi would be almost an abomination to them. We have seen that Ferengi are walking calculators that could put Vulcans to shame. So it would seem to reason that they would also have a very detailed understanding of language, all the better to find and create loopholes using legalese and other slights of hand.
Issues with "The Nagus"
- Thread starter SolidusRaccoon
- Start date
I would assume through a similar function as the Universal Translator that any written language could be translated into another, We rarely see traditional paper on Trek. I would think any hand held computing device could easily translate a written document into any language. So to learn multiple written languanges would we a waste unless you are a historian and need to read old tablets and such.
I s'pose that's possible, but if memory serves, there's like 250 or 260 Rules. that's a lot to remember if somebody didn't write 'em down somewhere.
This would be a good explanation, although the problem in the episode was that they were actively against Nog getting an education, apparently because Quark and Rom are so dense that they can't see that the Federation providing free schooling = profit. Of course, maybe they had a point, because they didn't want Nog exposed to the propaganda of Marxism-through-high-technology. (As Sisko was afraid the converse would happen to Jake.)
SolidusRaccoon said:
I also suspect learning a xenolanguage would be very difficult, even as a child. Forgetting the obvious things like lack of cognates and a totally alien script, it wouldn't even be a natural language, at least as far as the learner is concerned. It might be less like a language than a code.
On the other hand, the language acquisition skills of aliens need not be like humans, which are miraculous but still pretty limited, biologically and temporally bounded as they are.
I'm pretty sure the Ferengi have an extensive and effective education system in place - one based on learning at the job. And one of its main features is going to be inequality, the emphasis on some Ferengi getting the drop on others by cunningly acquiring better education. Common schooling would be the ruination of that, never mind the embedded UFP propaganda that Nog would be contaminated with if he were allowed to be schooled by Keiko O'Brien.
It's not as if anybody said Nog didn't need the skills of reading and writing, or that he wasn't going to acquire those in the course of a typical Ferengi childhood. Certainly the Grand Nagus didn't need to be explained what a "school" was; nor did he object to the practice of schooling.
Really, the only one who says Ferengi don't need schools is the moody Nog himself. And he's probably not even really serious, merely mocking his father's comments.
But all that would be true of the child's native language, too. Even the dullest Chinese child can learn Chinese (at least one sort of it, and probably several)... And would continue to be true through his or her life, really. It would basically just be a matter of having the right sort of environment around the learner (say, native speakers of the language), and doing the learning at young enough an age.
Who knows where the age limit goes on a Ferengi? Or on a human, for that matter; 24th century science might have unlocked the secrets of lifelong learning, potentially a much lesser feat than those nifty doodads of Crusher's that remove headaches...
Timo Saloniemi
