Very easy to see why this won the Nebula. Really good look at linguistics (not TOO hampered by Sapir-Whorf or limited understanding of computer languages), with inventive ideas and plot—only really hampered by the pat ending.

Although I’ve read it before, my appreciation has been amplified after reading Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman: perfect communication REQUIRES telepathy, and telepathy enables communication to be perfected. Interesting that so much in the 60s-70s really focuses on telepathy, but the novum gets dropped so abruptly in the 80s.