Niirti Pun

Two new officers had arrived at Stargate Command to join the International Stargate Team One, or ISG-1. One was from the Hong Kong Special Adminstrative Region, Colonel Andrew Chin. The other was from the United Kingdom, also accustomed to speaking British English, Colonel Robert Smith. Both colonels spoke with Cockney-Welsh accents. The two air force officers would be helping the combined team to recon, and possibly, to take combative action against one of Nirtii's bases. They would hopefully even be able to eliminate the evil goddess-poser herself if they were lucky.

The two colonels underwent much rigorous training, both physical and mental, for about seven days' time straight as soon as they arrived. Colonel Jack O'Neill, the quick-witted and most certainly unconventional ranking officer next to the impressive General Geroge Hammond, supervised the officer and enlisted training. The two foreign colonels had studied a bit of American-English very carefully for weeks beforehand to be able to communicate clearly with their counterparts who spoke American-English.

On the seventh day, they finally were ready to head out on their important, possibly dangerous first offworld excursion. Little did they know at the moment though that soon, due to a miscommunication involving misunderstanding of an accidentally-stated effective pun, they'd soon be involved in a rather serious misunderstanding. This type of dramatic miscommunication even occurring, however, also involved a lapse in communication between the two non-American officers and their American liaison officers.

Both officers Chin and Smith happened to be from places where, coincidentally or not coincidentally, drinking afternoon tea was a very popular daily habit. Even thought they were down in the New World continent of North America, they were still going to carry out their usual daily habit by themselves. It was almost three o'clock in the afternoon when a base airforce Sergeant, Tom Sanderson, due to a defective localized loudspeaker system and defective localized phone wiring, came by their temporary shared-office to inform them that it was "Nirtii time", since the two colonels had wanted toleanr They thought this NCO to be only unnecessarily stating the obvious, that it was almost time to be attending the daily-held afternoon ceremony savoring the hot, boiled liquid leaf-flavored beverage Unfortunately, events passed atypically so that Chin and Smith hadn't been informed about this alien enemy Goa'uld being named Niirti. So, of course they automatically thought the sergeant was certainly telling them that it was nearly the hour for anyone who could spare the time and wished to, to go to the cafeteria to take the afternoon tea/snacks serving. Chin and Smith happened not to like the typical SGC-served tea and its accompanying snacks. So they always opted to skip out on this American rendition of the event. And so a young, baffled Sergeant Sanderson adamantly tried to get his message across to these two misunderstanding visiting officers. "But you must go, colonels. We've specfically invited you two to go on this very important, essential actvitity."

"But this really isn't that essential an activity; I mean we will be doing this activity everyday, so why are you insisting so much that Colonel Chin and I partake in this event?"

"Uh, with sincerely no disrespect mean at all sirs, actually, no it's not, sirs. I can assure you that this is a rare opportunity you won't want to miss. I'm guessing perhaps we personnel on this base failed somewhere to communicate a vital fact We a get lucky to be able to capture so dangerous a Go'auld every day and perhaps bring them onto the base to interact with for our benefit."

"But why, for heaven's sake, would we want to want to bring a Go'auld onto base to a social gathering? I doubt they would prove to be very pleasant company, and not to mention that they could be entering this base with, perhaps literally from what I know of Go'auld abilties involving technology, some sort of dirty-trick up their sleeves to cause us unimaginable mayhem. Does General Hammond himself know about this plan of action? Because I'm extremely concerned to be involved with the American Stargate program if ypu people carry out such reckless, endangering acts such as this one you speak of."

Sergeant Sanderson frowned a most puzzled, perplexed look. What exactly could the misunderstanding be? *Well, let's see, lets just see...* Sanderson refelected to himself. Had he possibly spoken using American slang which somehow confused the two foreign senior officers. Eureka! Niirti time could very well sound like near tea time if someone misunderstood the intonation! All he had to do was ponder on the specifics for a moment and he'd gotten it. No wonder the eighteen-year-old first sergeant had been accepted to Colorado Springs to study and become a commisioned airforce second-lieutenant upon graduation. Being the perfectionist he was , he was a bit upset he hadn't noticed much earlier.

As soon as Tom Sanderson had explained this dramatic but simply-caused difference of syntax perception, the three military officers could only throw back thier head laughing. Colonel Chin and Colonel Smith no longer were no longer feel the urge to seek out General Hammond and demand he explain allowing such a ludicrous ideas to be carried out and even asking newly-arrived important allied officers to partake in such ludcirous behavior.

When General Hammond heard about this now-hilarious understanding and the linguistic misunderstanding cusing it, he laughed so loudly that he attarcted the attention of more SGC personnel than he would've liked to.