SPOILER(for rising) but come on...they just made it too easy..

[professor_griff]

sorry I didn't mean it like that It was posed more like a question/statement..

just one contradicts the other she spoke english but jack couldn't more loop holes....

[EYU86]

My head hurts, I'll probably black out like y...
DID
Wow, almost hap...

[professor_griff]

what, what where am I...

vortexes, event horizons, particle generating reticular ion subspace vacuum cleaners.....


*warning brain melt down* need to recharge my ZPM

[Hyperspace]

I did wonder about that language issue...with the Atlantis hologram it is plausible they could have translators, but with Teyla's people it is too convenient...of course English is spoken by the people of Abydos, to some degree (but being a relative newbie to SG-1, I don't know whether they were taught or something, but I remember in Stargate the movie they spoke 'gibberish').

Unless Teyla and her people have some abilities we haven't seen, or they just happened to recieve new editions of the Oxford English Dictionary via Intergalactic Stargate once in a while.

[Lugal]

When they found the holo-lady, the doctor did say it was his second time watching it. The Translaters could have picked up English from him before everyone else arrived.

[EYU86]

Okay, thats a viable explanation.
Good job

[tenthmile]

of course English is spoken by the people of Abydos, to some degree (but being a relative newbie to SG-1, I don't know whether they were taught or something, but I remember in Stargate the movie they spoke 'gibberish').

i was just under the impression that we were supposed to assume daniel taught the abydonians english while he was MIA in that space of time between the movie and the tv show.

however, i thought that what the holo-lady was saying (though i couldn't hear the whole thing... i missed a few bits and pieces that seemed important while mckay & beckett were yapping. i kept shushing them, but they wouldn't listen) was that all humans (in both galaxies) were... what did she call it? transplated or something by the ancients, and only some of them evolved? one would assume that something along the lines of a common history would involve things like common customs and languages; hence, the producers were trying to pass off their unwillingness to write a new language each episode by saying that we were all kind of inter-related (much like all of the groups of people the goa'uld 'transplanted' off of earth in SG-1). halfway through this paragraph it suddenly occured to me that i have no idea what i'm talking about, which is a shame really, because for a second there i really thought i was on to something.

[VixyOwl (~~Ani)]

I remember reading that the producers didn't want to have to worry about language barriers. They said that if they had to tackle the language barrier in each episode, the whole series would be a big linguistics class and thus, no fun stuff like gun fights, temporal paradoxes, technological finds and not as many allies. Personally, I like that they only use alien langauges when it reinforces the story line i.e. Umas.

(In my best Johnny Fever impersonation
Well, no one said writing a TV show was going to be easy...

But, seriously, this is a fair point. When you develop a sci-fi universe for TV, you've got 2 basic choices re language: provide a universal translator, or ignore the language unless you want to highlight it.

Do people ever complain about this in a sci-fi novel? Just a thought, there.

Getting off-topic, sorry. I'm perfectly satisfied with the universal translator explanation for the city, even though it was the easy way out. (for reasons listed in other posts re. viewer knowledge carried over from SG1)

[LordAnubis]

Sheppard's mobile remote unit (tricorder) from the puddle jumper. Perhaps it can also act as a translator -OR- perhaps Teyla has her own. They do have technology, such as laser lighter.

It's called "suspension of disbelief". In the world of make-believe (TV/movies), you're supposed to forget about stuff like "hey, they just got to that planet and already they speak the language." It's like Mio said, they can't waste valuable time trying to point to the ground, make grunts, and repeat their names for 40 minutes while trying to communicate; it would be lame, boring, and a waste of time. The easy way out: make everyone speak English unless a foreign language can be written into the plot in a cool way.

In the movie, a lot of detail was put in to the Abydonian language -- same with a few season one episodes. Later, they figured it best to ditch that and move to more important plot devices rather than waste time and energy (it's also expensive to hire real linguists to translate real languages) trying to communicate with the locals.

As far as the holo-ancient lady -- um, they were on a flying city that left Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy, sank underwater for millions of years, and was built by aliens who created thousands of stargates in two galaxies and learned to ascend to a higher plane of existence, and you don't think they might have developed a program that "read the minds" of the races who discovered the hologram and interpreted the language?

[Buzz Lightyear]

All this debate of languages is beginning to hurt my fron.

[Anthro Girl]

"Hello welcome to Atlantis would you like fries with your message of impending doom?"

And what, exactly, is wrong with that?

[Dreamin_of_Rain]

"Hello welcome to Atlantis would you like fries with your message of impending doom?"

If I was getting a message of impending doom I would want fries with it.

[VirtualCLD]

Might as well super-size them, I mean if you're already aproaching impending doom, super-sized impending doom can't be much worse.

[Dreamin_of_Rain]

we could throw in a cheese burger and soda to then...maybe nice frosty

[VirtualCLD]

Can't prepare for impending doom on an empty stomach, now can we? Poor Rodney might go into a hypoglycemic attack if he doesn't eat before hand.