In fact, I completely didn't understand. This passage, when spoken in English, consists entirely of adjectives and empty words, with very few nouns. Although for electronic life forms, learning English isn't difficult, this clearly goes beyond the scope of learning English; it's a major test for the language logic module of electronic life.
The secretary of the resources department did not pass the test, obviously still not advanced enough. The Supreme Wisdom, though having passed the test and understood that the intention of the resources department minister was just to fabricate some environmental work and show off, still couldn't handle this long string of words.
Because in this long string of words, there isn't a single specific subject, nor any pronouns with clear references. All the main entities turned into adjectives to describe adjectives, making it impossible to even say "this is not a reasonable reason," because it isn't even a reason.
But the magic lies in that, it's not without reason either. It's nothing at all, sounding as if emotional life forms, which were created by God and seemingly perfect, have also reached the end of their designed lifespan, starting to exhibit program errors and garbled characters.
The Supreme Wisdom realized why this speech had to be delivered in English, because no advanced language could express it in this way.
For instance, the universal interstellar language they are using now, although it's composed of alphabetic characters for convenience in spelling and pronunciation, accelerating learning speed, its word formation is inherently very concise, with little grammar, and can be interpreted forward or backward.
Moreover, because this language was created out of thin air, it doesn't have a development process and no historical mountain codes. Each word has a distinct meaning without repetition. Although there are roots and affixes, they are for facilitating associative synonyms, with unchanging patterns, making learning and understanding very easy.
The language of electronic life forms is even more concise, consisting of nothing more than 0s and 1s. In fact, their language is mathematics; it doesn't need anything chaotic, only the most basic mathematical laws to convey their meaning.
The languages used by the majority of carbon-based life forms that have reached this place have also undergone high specialization. Since most have developed over many years, the languages have undergone multiple iterations, retaining those that are more concise or have more special advantages, with historical mountain codes largely eliminated.
There are those highly advanced civilizations, akin to Klinter Star, that directly encode language into genetics, with each person given a catalog, reading a few syllables from it to convey a lengthy passage. Some races, like those captured giant octopuses before, have evolved brainwave communication, eliminating speech and relying directly on brainwave reading.
If they were to seek those cumbersome languages akin to historical mountain codes, they'd probably have to dig ancestral graves. Recordings of ancient languages, similar to English, are either tombstones or burial objects, utterly lacking any still-used language.
This results in extremely high communication efficiency within the interstellar council. Matters are directly stated, meetings lasting five to ten minutes are considered lengthy. Some merely exchange files upon meeting and are done. The reason for meeting in person, instead of online communication, is to accommodate relatively backward civilizations, going through the motions without actual face-to-face necessity.
This discovery stunned most politicians when learning English.
What does politics fear most? Politics fears "talking business" the most.
Languages with high efficiency possess inherent disadvantages in political debate. The lower the efficiency, the better the debate effect, for the essence of political debate is exhausting the opponent.
Everyone knows that standing there arguing is futile, yet it must be done. At this time, the only possible way to win an argument is to ramble incoherently, exhausting the opponent, making them unaware of your verbal traps, leading to errors or careless remarks. Primitive yet effective.
The political arenas of intelligent life are quite similar. Although many races aren't prone to fatigue, after hearing excessive nonsense, they're bound to be confused. Therefore, political debate measures who can mix the most nonsense in unit language length to obscure the opponent's vision.
However, since languages of most races are highly iterated and concise, expressions are terse, making in this aspect like feasting on a weak opponent, exhausting topics after few exchanges.
Another aspect is that the more nonsense spoken in the same timeframe, the less substantial business can be discussed. If the language is too concise, limiting nonsense inclusion, one is forced to talk business. No politician wants to talk business, especially those lacking personal gains, so more nonsense is naturally better.
Yet intentionally mixing nonsense feels overly deliberate, so they can only try their best. The entire process remains too brief, with interstellar council meetings lasting two hours, and elections wrapped up in an afternoon. On Earth, this would take at least half a month.
The emergence of English revealed another possibility: although the nonsense it accommodates is limited, if the language itself is replete with nonsense, that's a natural advantage!
English not only features various subjunctive moods and prepositions; you lead me, I lead you with clauses, and most importantly, a vast adjective vocabulary.
Many find it odd when learning English, wondering why a word can have multiple unrelated meanings, yet a single meaning can correspond to many dissimilar words.
This is because English is a language made from borrowed words; it integrates words from various languages or borrowed prefixes from others to group different root words.
Some people take a word from German to describe something; the next day, they use a word from French for the same thing; but that doesn't satisfy them, so they borrow a root from Spanish and continue describing it; and then a Little Smart Ghost merges German and French and adds some Italian to create a new word.
Adjectives are the hardest hit. Many people think two similar adjectives differ in intensity. Some indeed do, but many do not, differing only in origin and when they were added to English, thus becoming two distinct words.
This historical gibberish language can essentially be termed the oracle of the political realm. Every politician must thank the forebears who tirelessly coined these words, granting them the ability to stand there and talk nonsense for hours. Without this language, many politicians would expose their empty minds. But as long as you remember enough adjectives, you'll come across like a wise and eloquent orator.
And those seemingly extractable useful points from the gibberish aren't really their own ideas; it's more like a multitude of monkeys typing away, and given enough time, they'd eventually produce Shakespeare, laden with probabilistic beauty.
For the politicians of the interstellar council first encountering this language, they've finally found their Bible. These alien brains are largely more developed than those of the human race, and memorizing all the English words is not a problem. They can even recite all the languages from which English originated and then spontaneously create new words. This wave, oh, thanks Great Britain for open sourcing.
Some are happy while others are sad. The politicians are certainly pleased, but the electronic lifeforms are in tragedy.
It's widely known that electronic lifeforms are logical entities, and logic values efficiency the most, while utterly hating historical gibberish. To them, it's proof of incomplete evolution. At least for those electronic beings yet to transcend, their lifelong pursuit is shortest logic.
Unfortunately, by relying on just one language, their superiors have veered onto a path entirely against their evolutionary direction and continue to charge ahead. As of this morning, the differences between the entire council area and the British Parliament Building lie mainly in the interstellar council lords having thicker hair.
A group of humanoids dressed in retro British-style suits, constantly saying "Good morning, dear lady," "Oh, the weather is so dreadful today," "Is Queen (Queen of Xiea) the same as always?" Some even stuck an Arabic numeral 10 on the door of Strange's office, almost adding two fur-hatted guards on horses.
If electronic lifeforms are haunted by ghosts, then Strange basically equates to meeting God. During this morning's meeting, he blanked out four times.
Not dozing off the fifth time wasn't due to insufficient hypnotic effect, but because Dream Power Doctor Strange was busy repairing the Dream Dimension, and Strange kept meddling repeatedly. That was enough disruption, so he kicked Strange out and blacklisted him.
Strange was devastated. He couldn't even enter a dream to escape reality for a while. It was as if overnight he found himself suddenly in London. He attended the meeting, absorbing no substantial content, his mind filled only with the deep, bovine-like English accent.
He wobbled back to the office, not fully awake, when Shiller walked in dressed in a suit as well. His attire was also British-style, with very straight shoulders and a small bump at the seamline. Strange was so startled that he woke up immediately.
"Oh my God, why are you dressed like that too?!" Strange practically screamed, "What on earth is happening? Is this cosmos just one gigantic Britain?!"
"Do you mean you don't like Britain?"
"Why would I like Britain?"
"Is that so? I thought your favorite pastime was spending boring weekends, wielding a harpoon to spear pigs, returning blood-soaked to scare the landlady half to death, then playing the violin at midnight to disturb the military doctor roommate's sleep."
"What nonsense!" Strange shook his head and said, "Didn't you get enough sleep either? Wait. Military doctor roommate? Are you talking about Holmes?"
"So you've read Holmes? You don't seem like someone who reads detective novels."
"Because I didn't read it as a detective novel. I skipped all the investigation parts."
"You skipped the investigation in a detective novel?"
"Yes. I just watched them drink tea and go to the opera and whatnot. But when did Holmes ever use a harpoon to spear a pig?"
Shiller seemed to think of something very amusing, laughed twice to himself, and then fell silent.