This question has been bugging me.

One of the answers states

River Song explicitly mentions that High Gallifreyan writing "doesn't translate" -- even the TARDIS can't do it for someone who doesn't read it.

I remember this line.

I would have thought that even a language didn't have matching words then a common word could be extrapolated. For example apparently Eskimos have hundreds of words for rain (and Rob McKenna has 231 types of rain). English clearly doesn't have that level of granularity, however it doesn't need to. If an Eskimo wants to describe qimuqsuq to an English speaker they'd say "a snow drift". It's not an exact match but it's close enough.

Gallifreyan must have at least some matching words, "man", "food" and "sun" every day words which almost every language in the universe must share. Why then can't Gallifreyan be translated?

This question has been bugging me.

One of the answers states

River Song explicitly mentions that High Gallifreyan writing "doesn't translate" -- even the TARDIS can't do it for someone who doesn't read it.

I remember this line.

I would have thought that even a language didn't have matching words then a common word could be extrapolated. For example apparently Eskimos have hundreds of words for rain (and Rob McKenna has 231 types of rain). English clearly doesn't have that level of granularity, however it doesn't need to. If an Eskimo wants to describe qimuqsuq to an English speaker they'd say "a snow drift". It's not an exact match but it's close enough.

Gallifreyan must have at least some matching words, "man", "food" and "sun" every day words which almost every language in the universe must share. Why then can't Gallifreyan be translated?

This question has been bugging me.

One of the answers states

River Song explicitly mentions that High Gallifreyan writing "doesn't

River Song explicitly mentions that High Gallifreyan writing "doesn't translate" -- even the TARDIS can't do it for someone who doesn't read it.

I remember this line.

I would have thought that even a language didn't have matching words then a common word could be extrapolated. For example apparently Eskimos have hundreds of words for rain (and Rob McKenna has 231 types of rain). English clearly doesn't have that level of granularity, however it doesn't need to. If an Eskimo wants to describe qimuqsuq to an English speaker they'd say "a snow drift". It's not an exact match but it's close enough.

Gallifreyan must have at least some matching words, "man", "food" and "sun" every day words which almost every language in the universe must share. Why then can't Gallifreyan be translated?

This question has been bugging me.

One of the answers states

River Song explicitly mentions that High Gallifreyan writing "doesn't translate" -- even the TARDIS can't do it for someone who doesn't read it.

I remember this line.

I would have thought that even a language didn't have matching words then a common word could be extrapolated. For example apparently Eskimos have hundreds of words for rain (and Rob McKenna has 231 types of rain). English clearly doesn't have that level of granularity, however it doesn't need to. If an Eskimo wants to describe qimuqsuq to an English speaker they'd say "a snow drift". It's not an exact match but it's close enough.

Gallifreyan must have at least some matching words, "man", "food" and "sun" every day words which almost every language in the universe must share. Why then can't Gallifreyan be translated?