Insider, Updates

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manticore7
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by manticore7 »

On that subject, how does the general human population view themselves as? do they identify themselves as humans or as people of their own planets (i.e. Earthlings, Martians, Aldians, Esperanzians)?
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Charlie »

manticore7 wrote:On that subject, how does the general human population view themselves as? do they identify themselves as humans or as people of their own planets (i.e. Earthlings, Martians, Aldians, Esperanzians)?
Is not the answer self evident? If I asked you where you were from, would you not answer; the United States of America? Perhaps, If I was an American too, would you not say for instance California?
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Random Person
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Random Person »

So, I take it English is the dominant language for humanity above the national level?
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Absalom »

Random Person wrote:So, I take it English is the dominant language for humanity above the national level?
Considering e.g. the number of languages in use in India today, that seems likely. For it to be anything else, you'd presumably need a few decades of a non-English primary language nation dominating the world, and China doesn't seem likely to have the longevity (due to an age-demographics problem that they have) or foreign speakers for that, leaving India (where English is apparently used between their US State equivalents, sometimes being the only language two people have in common), Brazil (Portuguese), and the rest of Latin America. You could point to Africa, but they use a mixture of local (just like India, though I understand Swahili to be notable), English, French (which has already fallen out of the #1 spot in the world, and presumably won't return), and I think some German, and presumably Portuguese. Most people in Europe apparently get taught English in school, too.

So, the likely candidates for international languages are:
1) English (non-native speakers apparently already outnumber native speakers, so it's got mind share; the #1 economy (USA); and India, which is projected to become the #1 economy in ~50 years; and Europe),
2) Spanish (lots of native speakers, but most native speakers live close to the USA, so constant influx of English, watering down matters),
3) Portuguese (to some extent you can roll this in with Spanish, due to limited mutual intelligibility; Portish, anyone?), and
4) French (if French had a real chance of retrieving that spot, it likely wouldn't have lost it in the first place).

Looking at this Wikipedia list, it looks like Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Indonesian and Japanese would be possibilities (at least, if you consider French a possibility). In the case of Japanese this isn't realistic (look at the L2 speakers, and the fact that it's only spoken in meaningful volumes in Japan). Arabic is thus far a regional language, but not common in any of the current spacefaring nations, so we can ignore that too. Hindi and Russian are a bit more questionable: Russian presumably won't be able to become a dominant world language, but Hindi is native to India, which is a rising power, so maybe we'll all be learning Hindi in school in 150 years. Bengali and Malaysian/Indonesian I can't guess at, but once again, "spacefaring nations" comes up.

To the best of my memory, English is also the international language of aviation, so yeah, probably the dominant world language is English, and not just because that makes it easier for Arioch.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Hālian »

Well, the ICAO has French as a co-official language -- and so do a lot of other international bodies -- so I think by 2160 English and French will be the official language of mankind.
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Charlie »

In schools here, students must learn two. English to a level of no less than first additional. Three is not an uncommon number to learn here. I myself learned English and Afrikaans. I speak several Bantu langauges. I can understand but not speak Bulgerian. I can swear on both German and Portogease. I was learning Latin for a while but gave it up when i discovered how hard it was.

It might be that English is the international stardard today as well as tomorrow, yet, maybe more than one will taught in schools. French and German are both very common here.
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Suederwind »

CJ Miller wrote:Well, the ICAO has French as a co-official language -- and so do a lot of other international bodies -- so I think by 2160 English and French will be the official language of mankind.
I would rather think that a language from the East will take the place of French till 2160. Most likely Chinese, I guess, as it has around 850 million native speakers alone. However, I don't think that smaller languages are going to vanish. English and maybe Chinese will serve as some kind of lingua franca around the world and the colonies as well.
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by fredgiblet »

CJ Miller wrote:Well, the ICAO has French as a co-official language -- and so do a lot of other international bodies -- so I think by 2160 English and French will be the official language of mankind.
I'm fairly certain that that's simply because no one wants to go to the trouble of removing it. I don't think any new regulatory bodies are bothering with French anymore, or if they are it isn't #2. French simply doesn't have enough speakers anymore to make it a worthwhile #2 language.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Arioch »

I'm told that German is the best language for swearing.

I'm sure that earth will still be a very multilingual place in 2160, and each colony will have it's own language preferences. The most commonly used languages outside of Earth will probably be English, Mandarin and Spanish. TCA military organizations will probably need a standard language to operate efficiently; English seems as good a candidate as any, and is convenient for the story.

I agree with Fred that French is obsolete as a lingua franca. The time when all the courts of Europe spoke French is long past, and France's efforts to keep their language "pure" have worked against it's international appeal.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Absalom »

Suederwind wrote:
CJ Miller wrote:Well, the ICAO has French as a co-official language -- and so do a lot of other international bodies -- so I think by 2160 English and French will be the official language of mankind.
I would rather think that a language from the East will take the place of French till 2160. Most likely Chinese, I guess, as it has around 850 million native speakers alone. However, I don't think that smaller languages are going to vanish. English and maybe Chinese will serve as some kind of lingua franca around the world and the colonies as well.
It's worth noting that there's several "Chinese" languages, including both Mandarin (Arioch probably mentioned it because it seems the most widely spoken) and Cantonese.
Arioch wrote:I'm sure that earth will still be a very multilingual place in 2160, and each colony will have it's own language preferences. The most commonly used languages outside of Earth will probably be English, Mandarin and Spanish. TCA military organizations will probably need a standard language to operate efficiently; English seems as good a candidate as any, and is convenient for the story.
Do you think they're more likely to focus on "natively spoken" English, or on more of an "Internationally Simplified" dialect? And what's your opinion on the uptake of Hindi?
Arioch wrote:I agree with Fred that French is obsolete as a lingua franca. The time when all the courts of Europe spoke French is long past, and France's efforts to keep their language "pure" have worked against it's international appeal.
Apparently the Germans attempted to keep German "pure" for a while (and to some extent presumably still do), but there's some limits to it: they finally just gave up on pushing their own word for "computer".

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Arioch »

It's hard to imagine India successfully exporting Hindi when English has such a significant foothold in the culture there.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by fredgiblet »

I'll note as well the ICAO was founded in Quebec, if it was founded elsewhere I'd bet it wouldn't have had French as a primary language.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by GeoModder »

Arioch wrote:I'm told that German is the best language for swearing.
Let's say the language has its merits on the topic. :D
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by junk »

Arioch wrote:I'm told that German is the best language for swearing.

I'm sure that earth will still be a very multilingual place in 2160, and each colony will have it's own language preferences. The most commonly used languages outside of Earth will probably be English, Mandarin and Spanish. TCA military organizations will probably need a standard language to operate efficiently; English seems as good a candidate as any, and is convenient for the story.

I agree with Fred that French is obsolete as a lingua franca. The time when all the courts of Europe spoke French is long past, and France's efforts to keep their language "pure" have worked against it's international appeal.
I'd say German is the second best group of languages for swearing. The best set would be russian followed by many other slavic languages, which we might see in space as well.

In part just because the Russians still a space program of their own and do work with the ESA on a semi regular basis.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Absalom »

junk wrote:
Arioch wrote:I'm told that German is the best language for swearing.

I'm sure that earth will still be a very multilingual place in 2160, and each colony will have it's own language preferences. The most commonly used languages outside of Earth will probably be English, Mandarin and Spanish. TCA military organizations will probably need a standard language to operate efficiently; English seems as good a candidate as any, and is convenient for the story.

I agree with Fred that French is obsolete as a lingua franca. The time when all the courts of Europe spoke French is long past, and France's efforts to keep their language "pure" have worked against it's international appeal.
I'd say German is the second best group of languages for swearing. The best set would be russian followed by many other slavic languages, which we might see in space as well.
Russian is Slavic? I figured it would be Germanic, like the ancient Rus.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Jericho »

Absalom wrote:Russian is Slavic? I figured it would be Germanic, like the ancient Rus.
The Rus were not Germanic last time i check. They were east-Slavic tribes centered around what is now Kiev. The name Rus is said to have been given to them by Swedish vikings after a place called Roslagen when they united them and formed the Rus kingdoms (this is just a theory as far as i know but it's quite prevalent were i studied history. But I'm from Sweden so it might be biased).
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by discord »

the ancient Rus were basically vikings(correction, varangians, slight difference there.)but they got genetically outbreed by the locals, same with the language, russian is slavic, as are the people really.

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Jericho »

discord wrote:the ancient Rus were basically vikings(correction, varangians, slight difference there.)but they got genetically outbreed by the locals, same with the language, russian is slavic, as are the people really.
True i forgot that vikings were Germanic. We usually refer to them as Scandinavian (nationalist pride and all that :D ). But i don't think there were that big of a difference between varangians and vikings. The name was given to them i think by the byzantine empire and i thinks it's the origin of the word vanguard varangian-guard the emperors bodyguards wielding great axes. But essentially vikings who stuck around long enough to change their name.
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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by cacambo43 »

One of the galactic maps shows the approximate location of the Well of Souls near Historian space and the Umiak. Is this going to play any role in the story, or is it just there as an "Ooh, neat, look, there is a Well of Souls there!" type of thing?

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Re: Insider, Updates

Post by discord »

jericho: close but no cigar, many of the vikings that settled in the byzantine area joined the varangian guard, but not all in the varangian guard were viking, problem lies in the meaning of the word.

varangian, best translation is probably 'foreigner that takes service' although the varangian guard was dominated by 'viking' or northern germanic tribes, there were other foreigner savages in it like irish and scots....biggest problem though is that the word varangian was applied to ALL viking kind of guys by the greek(and east slavs, but they don't count).

so the varangians that settled into the rus were probably not varangian GUARD, and therefor probably mostly scandinavian(predominantly swedish.) and we all know what happens every time someone tries to invade russia....

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