The Languages of Pao

What Hacker News says

1. qsiJan 2024
   For a vintage SF treatment with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis at its center, read The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance. It's been a while since I last read it, but I have fond memories.
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2. hnzixSep 2022
   The Languages Of Pao by Jack Vance is another classic science fiction novel that explores the impact of language on anthropology (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). For example, the warrior caste speak a dialect that encourages aggression.
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3. JoeDaDudeFeb 2021
   Side note: I'd like to point out one of the very few science fiction novels about linguistics: The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance [1]. The novel is clearly inspired by the Sapir-Whorf concept that language shapes thought [0]. BTW: Another candidate would be 1984. Though not the main these, that novel introduces Newspeak, a language in which dissent cannot be expressed, thus becoming another tool of oppression.

   Minor spoiler: In Vance's said novel, the different segments of the population of a planet are taught three separate languages in order to develop and specialize economically, industrially, and militarily.

   [0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

   [1]. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Languages_of_Pao/ke...

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4. LuytMay 2011
   In the Scifi category, I'd recommend "The Languages of Pao" [1] by Jack Vance, which is inspired by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [2]. I've re-read it five times now, which means this book deserves the space it occupies in my bookshelf. Books that are only worth to be read once, you might as well throw away.

   [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Languages_of_Pao [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis

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5. theophrastusApr 2015
   "It’s the old trope, echoed by Philip K. Dick for one"; I always felt that Jack Vance got short shrift on this. In the ~1958 "Languages of Pao" he had body augmentation as a major subplot: "... The anti-gravity mesh was laid into the bottom of the feet and connect to the processors in the calves by means of flexible tubes thrust up from the feet ... a switch was installed under the skin of the left thigh..."

   Almost certainly the all too brief "Technomages" of Babylon-5 were based on these Vance characters.

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