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Curse of Babel: Difference between revisions
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* [[Older Than Feudalism]] literary example: The actual Tower Of Babel in ''[[The Bible]]''. Note that this isn't technically an example, as it was an [[Unbuilt Trope]] at the time.
** The fate of the N.I.C.E. in C. S. Lewis' ''[[That Hideous Strength]]'' is a shout out to the Biblical Tower of Babel.
** The Tower of Babel story is [[Older Than They Think]]—an older Sumerian version of the story exists, [https://web.archive.org/web/20131016171501/http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/36_babel.html as told here]. Technically, then, the version in the Bible is still an example of this trope.
** Given that the [[The Great Flood|flood]] had just happened, they may have just wanted a place to run to in case it happened again.
* In ''[[Snow Crash]]'', the [[Big Bad]] is attempting to spread an informational [[The Virus|virus]] that causes infected people to revert to the "language of Babel", supposedly a primitive language wired into the human brainstem. He uses this language to essentially take control of their minds. The language is incomprehensible to anyone who is uninfected and hasn't studied it extensively.
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* In a small arc in season 6, Sun-Hwa Kwon of ''[[Lost]]'' manages to lose her ability to speak English. Only she can still write in English, so there's no barrier to communication, and she's fine three episodes later. This is, unsurprisingly, generally considered one of the more pointless story arcs in the series' history.
* This happened to the cast in the ''[[So Weird]]'' episode "Babble", due to their exposure to a stone from the tower.
== Tabletop Games ==
* In the ''[[Scarred Lands]]'' setting, the Slarecian Language Virus is an odd disease or curse (hard to say which) that can infect anyone who tries to use magic or even rudimentary means to decipher the language of the Slarecian, an extinct species of evil sorcerers. An infected victim's language is changed to that of the Slarecians (which is gibberish to most natives of Scarn), meaning they can only understand or be understood by another infected victim, and all written language other than Slarecian makes no sense to him. Victims do not realize what has happened to them, as what they say sounds perfectly clear to them. Even worse, this disease is incredibly contagious; anyone who listens to an infected victim also risks becoming infected.
== Webcomics ==
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[[Category:Curse of Babel]]
[[Category:Word Salad Tropes]]
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
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