So I was watching a YouTube video about things other languages do that English doesn’t/can’t and that got me thinking about how interesting language as a concept is. Like, how all around the world people came up with different ways to express really complex ideas with just a couple sounds and symbols. And I was thinking about how language goes into world building, like with Klingon and the language stuff in lord of the rings.
And that got me thinking about fictional languages we don’t get to learn because no one actually made them in real life, but like they exist in the narrative. Specifically gallifreyian. We sorta get some of the writing but I don’t think we ever actually hear it spoken or anything.
Anyway, all this got me wondering, what would tenses even be like in gallifreyian? Like, this is a race that mastered time travel so thoroughly that they literally evolved to be better at it. That would have taken long enough for the language to evolve with them. So what would tense look like in a language of time travelers? Would there be words to specify if you are talking about the past or future version of a person? Would there be a way to express your place in a timeline relative to someone else? Like if you traveled to the past and talked to someone would the words changed to express that you are from the future or vise versa? What about alternate futures? Would there be a way to express future tense for a future that will not happen?
And all that isn’t even getting into the pronouns that would have to exist to accommodate regeneration. Like, would there be a pronoun to specifically describe a particular regeneration of yours. Like, would the doctor be able to say something like “I did a thing” but the “I” in the sentence would specifically mean the 4th doctor or something?
I mean, when you stop and think about it for a moment the doctor must have a hard enough time explaining things to his companions just because of the language difference. Like in the episode “the three doctors” when the 2nd doctor is trying to explain who 3 is he must be so frustrated by how limited English is.
Anyone wanna write a fanfic exploring that idea?
