Book 3. (7 results) Priest-Kings of Gor (Context Quote)
| Chapter # | Sentence # | Quote |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 20 | One must be careful of what one says in the tunnels of priest-kings, for one's words may linger after one, until they sufficiently dissipate to be little more than a meaningless blur of scent. |
| 10 | 21 | For longer periods of time there are various devices for recording a message, without relying on complex mechanical devices. |
| 10 | 22 | The simplest and one of the most fascinating is a chemically treated rope of clothlike material which the priest-king, beginning at an end bearing a certain scent, saturates with the odors of his message. |
| 10 | 23 | This coiled message rope then retains the odors indefinitely and when another priest-king wishes to read the message he unrolls it slowly, scanning it serially with the jointed sensory appendages. |
| 10 | 24 | I am told that the phonemes of the language of priest-kings or, better, what in their language would correspond to phonemes in ours, since their "phonemes" have to do with scent and not sound, number seventy-three. |
| 10 | 25 | Their number is, of course, potentially infinite, as would be the number of possible phonemes in English, but just as we take a subset of sounds to be English sounds and form our utterances from them, so they take a subset of odors as similarly basic to their speech. |
| 10 | 26 | The number of familiar, common English phonemes, incidentally, is in the neighborhood of fifty. |
 |
One must be careful of what one says in the tunnels of priest-kings, for one's words may linger after one, until they sufficiently dissipate to be little more than a meaningless blur of scent.
For longer periods of time there are various devices for recording a message, without relying on complex mechanical devices.
The simplest and one of the most fascinating is a chemically treated rope of clothlike material which the priest-king, beginning at an end bearing a certain scent, saturates with the odors of his message.
This coiled message rope then retains the odors indefinitely and when another priest-king wishes to read the message he unrolls it slowly, scanning it serially with the jointed sensory appendages.
I am told that the phonemes of the language of priest-kings or, better, what in their language would correspond to phonemes in ours, since their "phonemes" have to do with scent and not sound, number seventy-three.
Their number is, of course, potentially infinite, as would be the number of possible phonemes in English, but just as we take a subset of sounds to be English sounds and form our utterances from them, so they take a subset of odors as similarly basic to their speech.
The number of familiar, common English phonemes, incidentally, is in the neighborhood of fifty.
- (Priest-Kings of Gor, Chapter )