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It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much
importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in
the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a
drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or
any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme.
The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian
'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room
temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at
a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of
them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were
all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact
with any other worlds.
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What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far
as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off
the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very
angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young
structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at
night convinced that they are very close to something of profound
inportance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their
time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics
is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of
its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in
Ouisghian Zodahs.
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--Douglas Adams The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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