Randomness

[panyasan]

Normally the language in air travel is English. So if a pilot asked permission to land or otherwise communicates with the airport, it's in English. Except in France. You asked a question in English, you get an answer back in French. My brother in law was a replacement pilot once for a French company and they gave his instruction in French. He refused to fly if they didn't give him the instruction in English, because he wanted to understand the whole thing before taking off.
Finally they gave in.
I like the French and I love French language and I can imagine you're being proud of your language, but for me, this was going too far.

[Alelou]

Certainement!

So do we think that "Federation Standard" is going to be English, which ST either suggests or just assumes because it's an American show?

I liked the way Firefly used English and Chinese. You at least got a sense that there was more to Earth than English...

[Distracted]

I had only good experiences in France. I still remember back when I was so fluent that natives of France meeting me for the first time thought I was Belgian and Belgians thought I was Quebecoise. I went to the Louvre the summer after I turned 17 and when I told the ticket-taker my age in French so I could get in at the under-18 price she asked me for my carte d'identite (French governmental identity card) instead of my passport. I was on cloud nine after that for weeks.

Sigh. Those were the days. Now I can barely hold a conversation.

And yes, I think it's perfectly reasonable that Federation Standard would be a version of English. If we assume that war destroys a good portion of planet Earth in the late 21st century the way Roddenberry envisioned, the most industrialized areas on the planet with the most durable and well-developed infrastructure would rebuild to the highest technological level at the fastest pace. Everybody else would be reduced to islands of primitive pre-industrial agriculture existing precariously between the piles of radioactive rubble where the major cities used to be. They'd have to focus on farming and ranching just to survive. No time there for warp drive research.

I'm of the opinion that the long distances between target cities in the western US, Canada, and Australia (and possibly mainland China and South America) would give those countries a chance to rebuild faster, since the larger distances between target cities would mean greater non-radioactive land area. Soon the remaining population would all be speaking English with US, Canadian, or Australian accents. Of course, we could also all be speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, or Spanish if the rural infrastructures in mainland China and South America improved enough by the end of the century. But most of Europe is too cramped, IMO. Hit the main cities and you destroy the entire country. It's grim, I know, but I'm just being honest. If it makes any of our European members feel any better, I also think that where I'm living now would probably be hot as Chernobyl. I'm much too close to New Orleans.

[WarpGirl]

Dis it's kind of scary that you've given it so much thought! Happy thoughts!

[Distracted]

Sorry. You can blame research for my novel. Creepy, isn't it?

[WarpGirl]

Meh so is Skynet, but The Terminator is still cool along with just about every rogue computer movie ever made!

[Kotik]

Certainement!

So do we think that "Federation Standard" is going to be English, which ST either suggests or just assumes because it's an American show?

I liked the way Firefly used English and Chinese. You at least got a sense that there was more to Earth than English...

I think, if there will ever be a "standard language", it will most definitely be English, but not for the reasons Distracted has explained, IMHO. I'm a bit of a language nut. I'm fairly fluent in English and Russian, can hold my own in a conversation in Dutch and I know a few bits and pieces in Spanish, Japanese and Latin. One thing I learned from all of this is, that English is laughingly easy to learn in comparison to just about any language I know. Except for a few irregular verbs its grammar is very simple and well structured, as opposed to - for instance Russian - where you have two different versions of a verb, depending on whether or not the action is still in progress, completed or directed towards a physical target, yadda, yadda

Also phonetically English is rather easy. The only problematic thing is 'Th' (except of icelandics or the spanish, who have that sound in their language). When we tried to learn that in school, I looked like someone, who came third in wet T-shirt contest after half an hour. I literally drooled on my shirt. But, if you put some time in it, it is manageable and even if you don't get it right, like most of 'ze Germans', you're still able to hold your own in a conversation.

I think English might one day be the language of United Earth, because it is the most flexible and easiest to learn.

[Alelou]

You really think English is easier to learn than French or Spanish? I'm surprised. To me, they are FAR more predictable in their pronunciation and spelling than English. The grammar gets a little weird, perhaps -- especially having to know the 'gender' of things, but English has some of that too -- more than, say, Mandarin -- I've noticed Chinese students can really struggle with our pronouns.

But maybe if you're German every language seems easier. That is one difficult language.

I think what English might have going for it is that it contains so many other language roots, thanks to the Norman Conquest. So you have Anglo Saxon and Latin cognates, and a nice range of connotation because of that. It also evolves and absorbs words from other languages pretty quickly, unlike, say, French, since the French try to actively resist that. Of course, part of my job as a composition teacher is try to resist that evolution and tell students that no, that grammatical error the people reading the news make every night on TV is not actually correct English, but I know it's a losing proposition.

Distracted, I have to assume your novel is no longer about a murder mystery about a Brazilian (?) woman... it sounds interesting, anyway. One of my favorite SF books when I was growing up was Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I suppose it's very dated now. It was particularly chilling for me since it was set in a post-nuclear Florida. I quite distinctly remember the moment I was reading the book when my family and I would have been vaporized along with MacDill Air Force Base.

[Cogito]

Back when communities were isolated and encounters with foreigners were still adventures, wasn't it normal to adopt 'trade' languages that might be foreign to both parties but which they both understood well enough to barter in?

If the global society fragmented after an apocalypse it makes sense that the surviving communities would develop their own local dialects and jargon, but as they came together I imagine they would seek languages that they had in common. I think that English has become a defacto common language internationally just because we did so much of the pioneering work to establish air/sea international travel routes. It's reasonable that it would be adopted as an international trade language as the fragmented societies come back together. And perhaps, by virtue of being the language of international discussion, it might gradually become adopted as a common language - in the same way that people today who may never meet anyone who is a native English speaker might still find it useful to learn English.

Personally, I think it's more likely that in a couple of hundred years languages like Mandarin will be more common than English, just based on the number of people who speak it natively and the energy they're putting into international trade. But that would hardly work for a TV show aimed at a US market, would it?

[Kotik]

But maybe if you're German every language seems easier. That is one difficult language.

Isn't it interesting, how perception differs? German is in fact quite complex, mainly because every gramatical rule has about three gazillion exceptions. Also phonetically it can bog you down badly, because the ponounciation differs depending on the word. Thake the little letter combo 'ch' They form a single sound, but, there are three different ones, depending what word they apear in. They are spoken as 'K' in things like Cholera, as some sort of hissing sound in weich or the hard raspy sound (like Russians pronounce an H) in words like Dach. Or the letter V. It hasn't got it's own sound. It's either spoken as an F or as a W, depending what word they are in. And there is no rule to determine it. You just have to know for thousands of words

But German can't hold a candle to Russian, when it comes to a convoluted grammar. Each noun has 6 gramatical cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). Depending on case, each noun has 6 different endings, except if it is a living organism, in which it has only 5 different endings. There are 3 grammatical genders (male, female, neutrum), for each of which exist 2 sets of rules to determine which ending to append to the words stem, one for stems ending in a hard sound and one for stems ending in a soft sound. That makes 3 genders, 2 sets of rules each = 6 rules for 12 endings per rule set (6 in singular, 6 in plural). That means you have to learn 72 rules just to use nouns correctly And that's not even counting things like verbs. If you are currently doing something, you're adding an -ing to it in English and be done with it. In Russian each verb has two words depending on it's aspect.

Compared to things like German or Russian, English is really, really easy.

[WarpGirl]

I beta for a lady from Hong Kong who says Chinese puts all others to shame! The extent of my knowledge in that area is confined to Firefly. Honestly, I think that when it comes to which languages are easy and which are hard, it depends on the person. I went to high school with a boy who immigrated with his family from the Ukraine and he hated English. Mainly because we spell different words the same way, or they sound the same but mean something different.

[Silverbullet]

In the Foreign Service I transferred about every two years, depending. Unlike the Political Officers I only spoke English in the mission asI worked exclusively with Americans. the Political Officers were encouraged to learn the local language. That is a bear if you are moving every two years and your move can be around the world from Sub-Tropical to Nordic.

When Air Travel became prevalent and there was a proliferation of national airlines (every country had ot have it own Airline) one languge was needed. It would be used by all countries. so if an American Airplane was landing in Moscow the Pilot would receive landing instructions in English. Standard.Made it it a Hell of a lot easier for everyone. I think English was chosen to appease the Americans who at the time were the big kid on the block

"Once French was the language of Diplomacy. all things between different countries missions were in French. Of course internally their own language was used. but all else was in French.

BTW, the French wanted their language to be the one instead of English for the Airlines and airports to use. That was shot down.

SB

[Alelou]

Even in China, though, there are a bunch of different languages. If written Mandarin used an alphabet instead of pictures, it would probably stand a better chance of taking over the world. The sheer amount of memorization to become proficient at writing and reading it is a barrier. On the other hand, that might grow good brains. Who knows. Speaking of Russian per Kotik, I have often been impressed with my Russian-born colleagues and students. Perhaps having mastered such a difficult language, they really do find English easy. I've known them to speak and write better English than native-born students. Can't say the same for students born in the Ukraine, though. Not sure why that's different. Maybe the school systems, or more likely I'm just making terrible generalizations from tiny, statistically insignificant samples.

SB, I chose French as my second language in high school because I wanted to go to Georgetown and then get a job with the state dept. Didn't happen, which is probably just as well given my lack of diplomacy. Spanish would have proven far more practically useful if only I had known who my husband would be, but I can't regret being able to read Baudelaire (or at least once being able to). I also loved learning how the French count rhymes in poetry. It makes more sense than the way we do it.

[Distracted]

I dunno. Never made much sense to me to count the final "e" as a separate syllable when it's silent in common usage. French poetry used to give me fits. But I think Romance languages in general are easier to learn than Germanic ones. Especially Spanish, which sounds exactly the way it's spelled.

Some linguists tried to create an artificial "common tongue" that was simple to learn a few decades ago. Pretty language. Predictable spelling. No irregular verbs. Simple grammar. It didn't catch on, though. Anybody ever heard of Esperanto?

Distracted, I have to assume your novel is no longer about a murder mystery about a Brazilian (?) woman... it sounds interesting, anyway

Yeah. I ditched the murder mystery idea. It was potentially more marketable but it wasn't what I wanted to write.

[Silverbullet]

I took Spanish and French in High School. In French class I learned how t conjugate verbs. useful as hell when ordering a meal in France. That is all I learned was conjugating Verbs.

In spanish I had a merry go around with the Spanish teacher. I said I wanted to learn to speak the language. He said I had to learn the Grammer first. so I asked him to show me one person in the world who studied Grammer before learning to speak his native tongue. that earned me a trip to the principals office. I had a bad attitude.

Needless to say I was not a favored student in either class. Only took one semester of both.

SB