December 5 2002 at 12:12 PM No score for this post
(no login)
One fortunate result of the Template phenomenon is that Terra templates will share at least a majority of their languages in common. In most cases, English (eigo, Englisch) emerges independantly as a trade and technical toungue.
While difficult to learn naturally, mostly due to its numerous internal inconsistencies, English is also robust enough to withstand massive degrees of grammatical mangling with far less loss of meaning than is found in most other languages. When combined with its four hundred thousand word vocabulary and the availability of forced learning techniques, these factors have made English the trade language of the galaxy at large for most of recorded history.
English may be found spoken as a first language on almost every world of the Spiral (as can, to a lesser extent, the others on this list), but it is most common in the Cameron, Taiidani, and Centauri Sextants and is used for government purposes (IE, as an "Official" language) by the Lyran Commonwealth, Federated Suns, Free Worlds League, Humanx Commonwealth, Taiidani Empire, and most of the Outer Rim.
Next most influential is Nihongo (Japanese, Japanisch), which benefits from a highly regular grammar and a relatively limited syllabary. It's greatest flaw, in the minds of those learning it as a second language, is the ideograph-based writing system, which presents a feat of memorization to dwarf English's grammar and spelling rules.
Nihongo is found almost exclusively in those cultures descended from the Japanese islands on one Template or another - which, on the galactic scale, amounts to the Juraiian Empire and the Draconis Combine. Also, and for whatever reason, it is the common argot of the Toward Stars.
Third most influential is Deutsch (German, doitsugo), a somewhat more regular member of the same linguistic family as English. Aside from a trivial tendancy towards massive compound words, the primary complaint leveled against Deutsch is that it is by far the ugliest of the major languages to listen to.
Deutsch is found mostly in the Silesian Sector, in the Anderman Empire (properly: Der Andermanreich) and Silesian Confederacy. It is also spoken by a significant minority of the citizens of the Federated Suns.
Finally, and, less the species specific tounges of the nonhuman polities in the Centauri Sextant, last of the major languages of the Spiral, we have French, a language rendered difficult as a second language mostly by the attitudes of the native speakers and found as a vernacular in the People's Republic of Haven.
[Nathan's notes: D'oh! Forgot about the Liaos. Why do the Havenites speak French? Caslet. Pierre. _New Paris_, for gods' sake. Oh, and real English only has about 200,000 words, but the Spiral is a bigger place than Earth is.]
Blessed be.
-n
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
I was just about to ask this... luckely my char knows most of these languages (she knows german but isn't fluent in it). Although I half expected them to speak planar common, or that totaly new languages would show up.
I'd have been willing to pretend a "Galactic Standard Language" that had been translated as english along with the prose, but... that would have been lame. And trite. And boring.
Fortunately, the presence of the template worlds gives me an excuse for the long term historical existence of various terran languages, the sheer number of humans to be found ensures that they will be widely spoken, and the presence of widespread recording media ensures that they will be similiar enough to what has existed in the past to be easily recognizable.
Seriously. How much has English changed since the thirties or fourties? Less than any other 60-70 year period in the history of the language, I'll bet you money.
And now we can have multilingual puns and such.
Blessed be.
-n
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
>Although I half expected them to speak planar common,
>or that totaly new languages would show up
Well, there are a few totally artificial languages extant in the Spiral, but most of them are either locals (like the Vorlon main tounge Marain) or specifically designed for human/nonhuman diplomatic work.
The most well known diplomatic language is Galach, or Galactic Seven. This is the old "official" language of the Council, and even though it's been superceded by GalEnglish (i.e. base English with optimized slang) as more human polities became major powers it's still the offical second language of the Council. (like French is the second language of the International Olympic Committee, where every announcement or proclimation made by the IOC is said in English and French. Not because French is so widespread, but because it's a holdover from when French was the language of Art and Trade and Culture around the world. But I digress.)
Galach is flexible and fairly easy to learn cold, and back in the day when the Council was more idealistic (6,000 years or so ago) they sent out "welcoming probes" with entire Galach dictionaries onboard, so it's not all that unusual to find neophyte species - or even human variants - who use Galach when first contacted.
Okay, rant over. For now.
---
Mr. Fnord, Map Boy and Chief Vorlonologist
GSV _Suppressed Transmission_
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
English is the lingua franca (lingua anglais?) of the Cameron Sector. Anyone with a claim to education can usually communicate on a minimal level.
Otherwise, Japanese is the offical language of the Draconis Combine and almost every citizen is at least well versed in it as they are in English - usually better. There are also subcultures which use Arabic and Swedenese. French, or a mix of english and french known as anglo-french is common in the Federated Suns, mostly because Anglo-French is the common language on New Avalon. There is also Hindi speaking region in this state.
Mandrinn is the language of government in the Capellan Confederation, and there is a certain unoffical favoritism to those who adopt a Chinese culture, so it thrives. The Free Worlds League uses English because it's the only common tongue that most member states have and the Lyran Commonwealth officially speaks German, although there are significant Italian and Gaelic-speaking populations.
In the Caprician Sector, to get back to my main stomping grounds, the common tongue is Anglic, basically English, with French fairly common in the current upper-classes of the Galactic Empire and the Northern Republic on Nueva Terra. The New Empire of Caprice supposedly speaks Siberian but this is mostly theoretical and even the government almost never uses it anymore, except the military who -demand- fluency in Siberian.
drakensis
Of each thing ask what is it primary motivation, what is it nature, and most importantly, what sort of damage will it cause if thrown at a Visigoth with great force. -- From the unrecorded Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
Why so restrictive in the language choices? Why does no-one speak latin, and would I be correct in assuming that the elvish populations speak elven? Anyone speak Draconic? Aquan? Celestial? Abysal? Infernal?
Why does no-one speack dutch or Spanish? Today there is no unified language, so why would there be in the spiral?
If anyone needs dutch or german for story purposes, I'm fluent in both.
They may be mangling it, but it's not as bad as some things I've seen out there. Okay, that would be two people on the crew (Catty and I) who know German. I myself _think_ I'm more or less fluent in it, and if we're in doubt we can always ask Herr Brill about it (you've got Benji's address, right Drake?).
Not much more on the linguistic front I can offer, unless someone wants to put in a world colonized by Poles. I can provide consultation on the intricacies of the language then. Thou hast not seen mangled until thou hast seen Polish. Honestly. It's my mothertongue, so I can say that with a clear conscience.
-Griever
and the country may be nice, but living there sucks. Thank goddess I'm living in Germany for the next five years.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
>Why so restrictive in the language choices? Why does >no-one speak latin, and would I be correct in assuming >that the elvish populations speak elven? Anyone speak >Draconic? Aquan? Celestial? Abysal? Infernal?
Restrictive? Perhaps, but consider that we're drawing from other source materiel, most of which -does- have the described language associated with it. Also, of course, these are the universal languages, as it were - there's nothing to prevent any given subpopulation from speaking something else.
As for nonhuman languages, with a few exceptions there's as much variation per species as there is within humanity. There -isn't- really just one Centauri language - there are a hundred and fifty in use across Centauri Prime and the colonies... but everyone there will -also- speak the language that the rest of the galaxy -calls- Centauri.
Regarding magical species types, and so on and so forth... well, they're -there-, but they're also either dead scarce or adapted to the culture around them - Technology scales up. Magic doesn't. If you want to survive in the galaxy at large, you -need- scale. Producing a magical space battleship takes manhours on a scale not seen since the pyramids - -skilled mage- manhours. On the other hand, someplace like the Humanx can -mass- -produce- a tech-based ship with all the same capabilities and more.
Speaking meta-ly - this is a sci fi pastiche, not a fantasy one. There probably is a fantasy world Template on record, but I don't think that they'd be likely to be counted among the Hundred Thousand.
>Why does no-one speack dutch or Spanish? Today there is >no unified language, so why would there be in the spiral?
Because the Dutch haven't been relevant since the nineteenth century, if then. And, while there are plenty of Spanish-speaking countries, none of them (including Spain) is relevant enough to influence offplanet colonization, which is what, eventually, controls the developement of language in the Spiral.
Meta-reason? None of our canon sources use them.
Regarding unified tongues, sorry, there -is-. Walk into any airport control tower in the world and you'll hear English. Put it down to British imperialism, put it down to -American- imperialism, but people talk to each other in English.
BTW, ITYM "mangling". ^_^
Blessed be.
-n
(Who could have sworn that Reich was masculine.)
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
> Regarding unified tongues, sorry, there -is-. Walk into any airport control tower in the world and you'll hear English. Put it down to British imperialism, put it down to -American- imperialism, but people talk to each other in English.
Yes and no. In most places you'll find at least a few people that speak english, in a lot of places everyone might speack a bit of english but if you think everyone speaks english then you are in for a rude awakening when you go traveling.
But that is our world where you can reach any place on it within 36 hours, and communication takes less than a second, in the spiral movement and communication are a lot slower, or at least that has been my impresion.
That creates a pressure to communicate and your example airport control tower, is one of the places where such pressure is highest, and even ther not everyone is fluent in english, esspecialy not once you get to the smaller airports without international flights.
> but everyone there will -also- speak the language that the rest of the galaxy -calls- Centauri.
That is the case in some countries on earth, and they theoreticaly do speak the one language and their own dialect. However if you rely on that, I wish you good luck, you'll need it, esspecialy if you go of the beaten path (IE places where lots of people from outside come).
> Now, ultimately all this ugly rambling bullshit really doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot, because in the actual writing of the Spiral we'll be writing in plain old 20th Century American Generic English and not really dealing with the concept of different languages. This is probably for the best considering we're in the process of building a meta-fanfic world, not avant-garde science fiction.
The main reason I brought this up is because it's an intersting challence if the characters need to communicate but they need to do so through a translator (person, not a device) or nonverbaly.
Most authors either ignor this problem or use a Deus Ex Machina to fix it such as Star Trek's translators.
Everything will be written in english of course, for the bennefit of our readers if not for ours, except maybe the occasional phrase or so.
Lastly recordings do slow down the development of the language, but they don't halt it, not even close. At most they slow it down to half as much.
Shrug. Lingually I'm going with the source material. But I'm only listing the major languages: there are about 2000 planets in the five major states of the Cameron Sector so there will be quite a large of languages used on only a couple of them: for example there are spainish speakers in the Free Worlds League, they just aren't a major political force (plus the three worlds I'm sure of are also populated by Texans, Jews and various american indian tribes, all of whom speak their ancestral tongues.
Apologies if my German is awful - I haven't needed it for... 3 years working + 3 years University + 2 last 2 years at school... the better part of a decade.
drakensis
Of each thing ask what is it primary motivation, what is it nature, and most importantly, what sort of damage will it cause if thrown at a Visigoth with great force. -- From the unrecorded Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
*ahem* (and in all due deference to the Most Holy LE...)
The variance in dialects of any given official language around the Spiral depends on how long the species has been a player on the interplanetary or interstellar stage. Common literacy does act as a brake on linguistic evolution, but with strange aeons anything may happen. And if nothing else, there are a *lot* of players in the Spiral who've been around the block a few times.
Our example for today will be the several versions of Nihongo in the Galactic East and West.
The closest version of Japanese to what we as 21st Century Earthpeople would recognize is the Humanx dialect. It's the youngest form of Japanese currently spoken in the Spiral, and it's mainly centered on Venus and Venusian-derived colonies. The language itself is grammatically almost identical to meta-Nihongo, but it has more loan words, usually English, Han or Hindi.
The Draconis dialect is perhaps 500 years older on average than Humanx Japanese, and it has evolved over a period of extreme isolation and conflict. The grammar has changed over time, becoming somewhat terser, and of course vocabulary has changed to fit the situation, but the differences between Draconis and Humanx dialects are still fairly trivial. This is in part due to the Combine's vested interest in maintaining a pseudo-feudal Japanese aura about itself.
On the far end of the language evolution scale we have Juraiian. It's obviously related to Japanese, and probably *was* Japanese at the beginning of the Juraiian expansion into space. But - and this is the important thing to remember - Jurai first expanded into space damn near 20,000 years ago. That is a long time, even when you consider the life-extension tricks the Juraiians have (which are really fairly recent, all things considered, only showing up in the last 10,000 years or so), so it's not such an incredible thing that the language has changed.
There are two known forms of Juraiian. There's a diplomatic form, which is the most archaic they can possibly find and still sounds very different from Humanx or Draconis, almost like Chaucerian English sounds very different from Modern, and there's a "private" form, which is used exculsively in the confines of the Empire, and it's only barely recognizable as having Japanese roots.
The similar situation goes for the various forms of English or German or whatnot scattered about the Spiral - the greater the time differentials between empires, the greater the variations in vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc.
---
Now, ultimately all this ugly rambling bullshit really doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot, because in the actual writing of the Spiral we'll be writing in plain old 20th Century American Generic English and not really dealing with the concept of different languages. This is probably for the best considering we're in the process of building a meta-fanfic world, not avant-garde science fiction.
Still, it's fun, innit?
---
Mr. Fnord, Map Boy and Chief Vorlonologist
GSV _Suppressed Transmission_
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
Speaking as author and not LE, I'll argue that. First, given that the incredible Juraiian lifespan depends at least partly on the Trees, I'd be inclined to go whole hog and say that the extension properties were designed into the species at the very beginning and have thus been around since there -was- a Juraiian empire - thus, let's say that Azusa's great-grandfather was emperor at the time of the creation of the Trees.
The Trees, by my view, were genetically engineered from various terrestrial species with the intent of creating most of their current capabilites - Tsunami, the nature goddess worshipped by the proto-Juraiians chose to bond herself with the initial prototype tree and become a SAHB.
If we're going by the theory that the Juraiian knowledge of genetic engineering and suchlike was given them as a gift by Washuu at the very beginning of her career as a scientist (while working in the Council Archives), then her given age of 20,000 years plants the age of the Empire proper (as opposed to the coalition of culturally-Japanese pirates who would become the Juraiian ruling class) pretty firmly.
Googling statute of limitations for Grand Theft comes up with a period of five years (in the state of Florida) - expanding a typical human lifespan of 70 years by a factor of 140 (Ryoko's 700 year statute / five) gives us a proportionate lifespan of going on 10,000 years. Granted that Juraiian attitudes and laws may differ from those of the USA, but it is a piece of evidence. (Incidentally, this means that Ryoko is, by Juraiian standards, right bang in middle age. Which might be fun to play with.)
The presence of the Wings of the Light Hawk was a complete surprise to the creators of the Trees - they had been aiming for limited psionic potential, sufficient to allow proper navigation of Quantum II hyperspace. Further examination of the genetic code of the Trees uncovered no explaination. (Obviously to us, they're a reflection of the power that Tsunami grants to her physical children, the later generation trees) As time has gone by, the durability/strength/efficiency of the Wings has increased significantly. Again, the Jurai don't know why. While the nature and origin of the Wings remain a cypher, their behavior is extensively researched - people may not understand them (although, to anyone but the highest and most trusted levels of the governmental and research communities, that's because the knowledge is held Most Secret) but, like the 20th century's relationship with gravity, they know quite well how they act and how to use them. Naturally, the Jurai don't talk about this much. The creation of the Light Hawk Wings is held by most of the galaxy to be one of the best kept secrets in history - even I-branch thinks the Jurai know more than they do.
W/regards to Funaho's age, no matter what the origin of Juraiian longevity, they can probably grant it to whoever they wish (which leads me to suspect that common people of Jurai are just as long lived as the nobility, just not as powerful in any sense of the word) and would certainly have developed it to its fullest extent by the time she emigrated.
I'll suggest that Azusa and Misaki are about the same age as Ryoko - that is, firmly middle-aged. Funaho is much younger, less than a fifth that, but the poor medical care and such in her younger years (especially by Juraiian standards) has probably had a number of negative effects and I doubt that she'll outlive them by terribly long.
Amusing note - by Juraiian standards, Funaho and Yosho are practically the same age, being seperated by less than a hundred years.
Anyway, getting back to language, there's also the evidence that Ayeka and the other offworlders were able to understand Tenchi's 20th century Japanese with little to no effort (which was probably just for dramatic convenience, but oh well).
Blessed be.
-n
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
>Speaking as author and not LE, I'll argue that.
>First, given that the incredible Juraiian lifespan
>depends at least partly on the Trees, I'd be inclined
>to go whole hog and say that the extension properties
>were designed into the species at the very beginning
>and have thus been around since there -was- a
>Juraiian empire - thus, let's say that Azusa's great-
>grandfather was emperor at the time of the creation
>of the Trees.
<extrapolation on Juraiian lifespan redacted in the name of Homeland Security>
I have to admit that I'm kind of wary about giving the Juraiians such exaggerated lifespans. Maybe it's my transhumanist background, but it occurs to me that any culture where individual lifespans hit five digits is going to be only *remotely* human in the way it thinks, acts, behaves, etc. Certainly nothing like the Juraiian Empire we know and love.
The Trees, on the other hand, I could accept being 10,000 years old without blinking. Tsunami isn't human to begin with, and she's only really started *acting* human for what, the last 2-300 years? (minus the time Sasami spent in cold storage)
On the gripping hand, howzabout a compromise?
I only steal from the best, and this time I'm stealing from John Biles. For his _Dance of Shiva/Sailor Moon Z_ setting, Biles has set the average Juraiian lifespan at about 1500-2000 years, with exceptional individuals (read: nobility) hitting the 3000 mark. We can up this a bit - say by a kiloyear - and remain on the bleeding edge of plausibility. It also gives us the opportunity to play around a little with previous dynasties. The Jurai started out as pirates after all, and old habits die hard...
..what? Oh. Language. Right. *ahem* Ref what Catty said about language drift happening even with recording tech, and adding lifespan extension as a further brake, I'd still say Juraiian is going to be very different from 20th century Japanese. 20,000 years is a damned long time for any one language to exist unchanged.
---
Mr. Fnord, Map Boy and Chief Vorlonologist
GSV _Suppressed Transmission_
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
>I only steal from the best, and this time I'm stealing
>from John Biles. For his _Dance of Shiva/Sailor Moon Z_
>setting, Biles has set the average Juraiian lifespan at
>about 1500-2000 years, with exceptional individuals
>(read: nobility) hitting the 3000 mark. We can up this a
> bit - say by a kiloyear - and remain on the bleeding
>edge of plausibility. It also gives us the opportunity
>to play around a little with previous dynasties. The
>Jurai started out as pirates after all, and old habits
>die hard...
Hmm. That would work, I suppose. But, another option - actual Juraiian lifespans match the figures I've given, and they don't start really forgetting things until the onset of their equivalent of senility/old age (I see Juraiian aging as taking perhaps thirty years to -physical- maturity - mental maturity is a function of culture and the expectations and opportunities it offers and will probably actually take -longer- - followed by an excruciatingly slow aging from early twenties to mid fifties over the next eight kiloyears or so, which is in turn followed by a relatively rapid deline into what we mayflies would consider old age, going from fifty-five to 70 in about a century and a half), but while the actual storage capacity of a human brain is big enough that almost no amount of life experience will fill it, the actual -operating memory- of a person is much smaller, perhaps twice what our natural spans allow us to use. So, a three thousand year old Juraiian might be able to call up information on, say, hand-to-hand techniques even if it'd been a while provided something reminded them, but wouldn't think to unless they kept in practice. Thus, a Juraiian would live in a 'working memory lifetime' of only a couple hundred years, no matter how many years worth of old, dusty memories they have tucked away. Put in computer terms: Any human has an impossibly huge hard drive and limited RAM. Intelligence is a function of the efficiency of the operating system and the speed of the processor. A Juraiian will have a fuller HD (and thus, longer load times when pulling from same), but the same size RAM.
This would produce a few quirks, both cultural and personal, but nothing inhuman, I think.
>...what? Oh. Language. Right. *ahem* Ref what Catty said
>about language drift happening even with recording tech,
> and adding lifespan extension as a further brake, I'd
>still say Juraiian is going to be very different from
>20th century Japanese. 20,000 years is a damned long
>time for any one language to exist unchanged.
Hmm. Depends, I think. For one thing, languages on Earth have been going through tumultous times, being exposed to new cultures, strains and influences almost constantly. Catty, is there any data on the rate of change in a language cut off from outside influence?
This is relevant to the Spiral because, despite the scale of things and the number of cultures involved, it's all been done before. There's nothing new there - civilizations, _species_ can fall and rise again and -so- -what-? The tide went out. It'll come back in again, maybe not exactly the same but close enough that there's no reason to care.
With that in mind, why should a language change? It already has everything it needs to describe the situation, and isn't encountering any new stimuli to spark change.
Another point of argument/question, more specifically relevant to the Juraiians, is - is the evolution of language a straight function of time, or is it a function of -generations-, of the replacement of the parent's slang by the children's (or however you care to put it)? I doubt there's much factual data for that, simply because the human definition of generation hasn't changed much.
The standard of living among Juraiian commoners (commoners, not the longer lived and filthy stinking rich nobility) is second in the galaxy at large only to the Humanx. Their idea of basic accomodations, we'd call pretty nice digs. It's been demonstrated that a high standard of living -nukes- birthrate. This, in combination with the staggering Juraiian lifespan, means that while a Juraiian might have three or four kids over their life, those births will be spread out over their -entire- life - a Juraiian generation must be, what, five thousand years?
Twenty thousand years, that's only four generations, then. Four generations ago for -us-, that's, what, WWI? How much change in the language in that time?
Blessed be.
-n
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
another point on this debate is how much of the population has the extended life-span. If it's a small elite, then they'll probably remain relatively constant while society changes around them. If it's everyone then yes, they're going to have a very different viewpoint from us - see the prolong effects in the Honorverse for the effects just on the first few generations.
OTOH, if it's just isolated individuals then they will have to adapt and keep changing. I mean, for example, my avatar is apparently in his forties but has clear recollection of apparently being in his mid-twenties - around 4000 years ago (that's a total lifespan of 15-20 thousand years. And he has not encountered anyone else who's got anything like his lifespan. He has to keep up with lingual or cultural changes or he'd probably go nuts.
Plus he's angsting about whether or not he's still human after all this time and is having trouble recalling many events after so long (he quite literally cannot remember how old he is). Which should make things interesting when he meets Buck Rogers - who remembers him from 20th century 'Earth'.
drakensis
Of each thing ask what is it primary motivation, what is it nature, and most importantly, what sort of damage will it cause if thrown at a Visigoth with great force. -- From the unrecorded Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
>Catty, is there any data on the rate of change in a language cut off from outside influence?
Not much and certainly not over long periods of time, however among a small group language change should in theory occur slightly faster. Language is to communicate with others if there is no-one to ever speak the old stuff then the new will become 'offical' much quicker. Language and Language change are introduced by kids, so yes Juraian language would stay pretty much constant, but places with a higher birthrate will experience faster language evolution.
It's true that outside influences can change a language much more rapidly than internal ones, but those are jumps in the language evolution, and language evolution will be slower but much more chaotic without them, and they aren't all that common.
A great deal of changes that seem odd come from words from other languages which are grafted to the language, this is again a jump in the language evolution and is slightly more common. This still occurs in the spiral, but the words aren't coppied exactly so there is already a change there, and in a few generations they are quite different from what they stared out as.
Finnaly common words evolve faster than less common words because one type is used more often.
(Most this is an extrapolation from some Scientifc American articles so I'm not sure how valid it is.)