SPOENS are considered a mostly harmless nuisance until one of them teaches all the cogniscents who communicate with light, Morse Code and it caught on. -- Anon Guest
[AN: There's a few things to consider here. First - SPOEns are the Society for the Preservation of Original English and permanently in argument about what Original English is. Second - Morse Code is only a means of codification of language. It's right there on the tin. Third... there's more than a few cogniscents who communicate with light. It's a little much for just one SPOEn]
Never underestimate a Human with an obsession. Those with a laser focus on one obscure thing have a power that few can understand. Most of the time it's the power to infodump for the entirety of their waking hours, but occasionally it branches out to... cultural cross-contamination.
Sort of.
There's more than a few cogniscent species within the Alliance who rely on Melil telepaths because they can't communicate in the average way. The H'nuffruff gained some advantage from semaphore, and so did other insectoid species. There were other low-gravvers for whom communication is... technical.
The Jelly Dancers are a prime example. The ultimate in low-grav life, they're a series of hive minds that communicate amongst themselves with light and motion. It takes a special kind of individual to translate their 'speech' into GalStand.
Until SPOEn Jarg took their interest in morse code to a Jellydancer habitat. That, and a programmable semaphore light. And being a SPOEn, they simply had to try signalling the swarms in the English variant they favoured the most[1].
The first few messages were, by pure linguistic co-incidence, a great insult towards the closest swarm. Jarg barely escaped with their life.
The greater advancements were made with expanded equipment. It included colour-shifters, a grid of such lights, and at least one specially-trained Melil. As well as work on both sides.
In the end, Jarg's efforts were a mere footnote in the invention of the Jellydancer comms modem. An important footnote, make no mistake, but a footnote all the same.
[1] Students of English will know that there's no such thing as original English.
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