[CLOSED] Muncorn's Sol Common and Tau Ceti Basic Reform

[Muncorn]

So, some of you will have seen my earlier note, but I'm somewhat abandoning much of that for now and instead working on my new ideas for SC and TCB, and I'll happily take feedback and responses to all of this, as I'm putting a good deal of effort into this.

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Current Form

Currently, Sol Common and Tau Ceti Basic are defined by thus. Sol Common is a bastardised combination of Mandarin, English, Portuguese and a smattering of other languages spoken by nearly all of humanity, and is the official language of the Sol Alliance. Tau Ceti Basic is a similar language, but contains more influence from Japanese and Spanish. The crux of the problem is two things.

1. These languages would never work in any feasible way. SC for example; English and Mandarin follow such different forms and structure that combining the two is nigh impossible, and would look positively awful, same goes for TCB. Additionally, why would this ever form? You never see these three groups of people conversing enough for this to be the case, any united governmental body that has those ethnic groups in their control would choose one of the three, and set it as the standard. You can see that done across the world, and is the reason China all speaks Mandarin, or Britain all speaks English rather than Gaelic, Welsh and every other fucking language we have here.

2. Aliens. It is stated on the lore page and has be reaffirmed to me by Jackboot that the reason aliens cannot speak SC is due to biological incapability. But consider this, TCB and SC are very, very similar in structure and vocabulary, so why would this be the case here? How can Aliens speak one language, but not another that is fairly similar to the first?

So it was my intention to fix these by focusing on these two problems mainly, and the third of; How did the language come into being, why is it spoken, why not another language? Originally I did not consider this all, and simply though on point 2, but after rethinking and considering the other point, I believe I've come up with a semi-solution at the least, and one which I've already gotten quite positive feedback on. So lets get to it.

Sol Common

Lets first address SC's problems first of all. It's main one, and the only one I'm really addressing, is that of it's structure and roots. It is, and I quote from the wiki; "An agglomeration and blending of Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi and Russian with hints of Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese". That is plainly ridiculous, as has been affirmed to me by several language teachers, and speakers of Mandarin, Spanish and Russian speakers. Also, I've realised I messed up in my language definitions earlier, ignore that my point stands. So what would a more reasonable system look like? First off, lets see the reasoning behind how this came to being.

According to Jackboot (Or my own deductions, honestly not sure my memory is awful) the Sol Common dialect formed after the colonisation of Mars, when vast groups of ethnically diverse people started living in close proximity to each other. These groups started to mesh their languages together into the form they're in today, in accordance with general populations of the ethnic groups and overall speakers, thus why Mandarin and English are the main influences to the language. This then standardised (somehow, still haven't figured that out) and became the norm across the Sol Alliance, being taught in Martian and Terran schools as well as across the galaxy, even becoming the staple of Tau Ceti until it was overtaken by TCB.

So where's the problem here? First off, in it's forming. A mass group of ethnically and linguistically diverse people do not try to merge all their different languages together, they tend to do one of three things. One, they'll choose a language out of the selection, either the easiest or the most spoken, and learn that and use it as a standard. Two, they mesh several of the most spoken languages that are linguistically similar and use that. Three, they stick to their own languages. Option 1 is hardly ever taken unless it is forced upon them by a governing body, such as through imperial control (not the case here). The most common route taken is a mesh of Options 1 & 2, they mesh their own language with similar ones and leave the rest to their own devises, like with like. Asians mesh their Asian languages/use Mandarin, since the other Asian language are fairly insignificant, Europeans mesh English with Spanish and Portuguese, Middle Easterns use Arabic (possibly with Hebrew and similar as well, I don't know these languages very well, can't make the judgement on it). Secondly, is the governmental standardisation, but I can't discuss this until I've brought up the new ideas, so give me a moment.

So now, let's discuss my ideas for the new form of SC.

So it would be reasonable to deduce that a singular standard language across the Sol Alliance would be difficult to form, especially in it's earlier years, so what would happen? I reckoned that three major dialects would pop up over the first few hundred years of outer-planetary colonisation, each with their own unique cultural and linguistic differences and roots, so lets discuss them. Also, the names are placeholders for now, I'll come up with some fancy name unless people agree they're good names for the languages. Also, anybody that asks me to properly timeline this, fuck you. Unless there's a glaring problem I'll leave it slightly vague, I'll timeline it when I add it to the forums in the hopeful event of this passing.

Sol Common - A: A basic amalgamation of English and German, it retains much of it's English roots but tends to follow a more agglutinative structure akin to the German side, with much of the same stupid rules of English, since those are forever eternal. It is currently the official language of the Sol Alliance, the most widely spoken by far. It struggles to overtake English in popularity in much of Earth, but is fairly widespread across the rest of the Alliance. It was taken up as the official language of Mars by mass popular vote, only countered heavily by representatives from Lowell City, likely due to it's large ethnically Asian community. At a later date it was taken up as the official language of the Sol Alliance as it had become widely spoken across space as well, and had taken thorough hold in Tau Ceti and was the officially language for the system there as well.

Sol Common - B: Essentially a simple form of Mandarin, is has little variation from the language spoken today with changes taken into account over time. It is thus nearly perfectly interchangeable with the large pure Mandarin speakers of Terra and smaller moon settlements in other systems. It's classified separately from Mandarin for the reason there was a mass reform of it's form in 2286, changing much of it's written calligraphy to a reduced and simpler form, as well as a few smaller changes as well. Though this was ill taken in the general community, it has slowly settled it's way into the general speech of most people, though is occasionally inconsistent between speakers.

I'll start off by saying I know little about the language roots for this one, so apologies for any problems with it.

Sol Common - C: The least spoken of the three, generally consists of base Arabic with a large amount of Hebrew influence and is not noted as the official language of any major city in the Alliance. It does however hold sway as it is the only major language to have major religious significance, as it is massively used in the Islamic and Jewish communities, with it being the recently appointed official language of the new Islamic Caliphate, and the first language of multiple major Jewish leaders. It is yet to take sway within Sikh or Hindu communities, though linguistic specialists suspect it may soon begin to permeate into the faiths. It is additionally the only one of the three SC's widely spoken on Earth, being the secondary official language of the United Arab Council, after Arabic original.

The Change? What this seeks to fix is the ridiculous problems earlier noted by splitting the language into three forms, each spoken by select and different ethnic groups of people, SC-A by the main populous, SC-B by ethnically Asian characters, SC-C by ethnically Arab characters as well as Islamic and Jewish people to certain extents. This could allow for a good amount of extra roleplay by giving humans more depth with their language, rather than being a general catch-all; "It's just english guyz, who fuckin cares anyway lol"; and instead ties it into the interesting language ideas we see in the other species. I'll address here an argument I received from Nanako, which within of itself is a good argument, but one with little substance:

consider mechanical effects of this though. Alien languages as they are, are already used somewhat uncommonly-to-rarely. the tajaran one is the only one that really gets considerable use, and only because of the large quantity of tajarans giving them someone to speak to

the more a language is subdivided and split, the less your chance of finding anyone who speaks it, and thus having a reason to use it

i'm pretty sure thats the reason we only have one language per species

any new ones added not only won't be used, but will harm the usage of existing ones

So first off, we have lots, lots of human players. You say the only commonly used alien language is used because there's a lot of them, we now have the most played species being given a meaningful language option, so I feel that this would increase it's usage massively. And harm the use of existing ones? It won't harm TCB, as it's needed for inter-species communication, and as for finding other players that speak it? I've gotten feedback and though the vast majority of players will use SC-A, for obvious reasons, there's several that will use SC-B and a good few that use SC-C, and that was all without full explanations as I've given here. And I also feel the addition of these languages will entice the creation of more characters to fit these languages, filling the void of pure European characters we have right now.

What do I want to change? One, the lore surrounding this, in conjunction with my wanted changes to TCB. I'll add more detail either by request or when this gets accepted where I'll thus add it to my new and reformed wiki page (I also wanna call for the abolition of Tradeband and Gutter, but that's for another day). And for gameplay, I'd like the addition of these three as interchangeable speak-able languages for humans, instead of the static Sol Common. An option to not be able to select one would be nice, but not necessary.

Tau Ceti Basic

So I'll go with this the same way I did with SC, current form; problems; fixes. Currently Tau Ceti Basic is, and I'll quote from the wiki (which has be re-affirmed to me is correct by Jackboot): "An offshoot of Sol Common, which incorporates stronger elements of English, Japanese, Cantonese, Bengali and Arabic, with some French influences.". Now, this contains many of the same problems as the original SC did, that of this simply not working from a linguistic or cultural standpoint. These languages should not and cannot blend in any cohesive manner, though much of the problems I said of SC can be cited here as well. I'll also note that I don't find the change to TCB as important as the one to SC, though both must happen for either to work.

So, what're the new ideas Muncorn; you ask. Now, I'm no politics nut, so I'm not going to indulge in the absolutes of how the language came to be, as that's a difficult thing to work around. If somebody could make a better explanation than the one below, that'd be much appreciated.

Tau Ceti Basic: For a long time linguists had pondered what form of communication would be used if aliens were ever to be found. Music? Art? Movement? All were pondered, some explored, few tested when the time came about. A linguist by the name of Josef Hamilton developed what he called 'Alien English' between the years 2245-2253, with the help of many biologists, fellow linguists and a good few physicists. The end result was a language much like English that relied more on the use of vocal chords than on the tongue. This was chosen due to a general theory that any civilised and developed species would need to communicate through some form, and vocal chords are a massively efficient way of doing so. The language itself is quite clean and sounds simple at first listen, though contains all the complexities of a regular language. It is often able to be understood by native English speakers, though with a good deal of difficulty. It was adopted by the Republic of Biesel as it's 'Official Language of Interspecies Vocal and Text Intercourse' in 2417 in conjunction with talks with Skrell on the basis more species would soon be discovered. Thus far it has proved useful, though the languages use of the S and R (the only remaining sounds that predominantly use the tongue) have noticeably caused languages for some species, but no calls for a reform have been made. Though not the official language anywhere, it is taught in most alien systems and is normally an optional course in Biesel schools and most SA governments will teach it as well.

The Change!: I intend a few small things to change, but not many that would massively effect most characters, and those that are effected can figure it out themselves, shouldn't be massively difficult. The language itself has been spoken a good number of years, and though it is not the official language of Tau Ceti, it is spoken galactically as the language standard between species, and is additionally a requirement for all NT crew to speak it to near fluency. This all serves to solidify TCB as a language that's not utter shite, and give it some meaning and use, since right now it consists of; "Oh, this language? It's just english with some like, other shit, nothing special"; and though this isn't much different, it makes sense, has historical and meaningful essence, and compliments the SC changes quite nicely.

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So, I hope you all enjoy this, and I'd appreciate feedback and the like. Should be it all finished for now, might do some touch ups later.

[Nanako]

the languages in sol common are intentionally chosen as the most spoken languages on earth, and represent the most likely cultures to be a major part of the sol alliance.

The old languages still exist, nobody ever said they were abolished, there are plenty of german speakers on the station. Sol Common exists to be a COMMON language. Splitting it up defeats that purpose. Maybe it evolved, maybe it was designed. but it fills a purpose either way, a purpose which is not served by three different languages.

It also fills a gameplay purpose, being a 'common human thing' that humans can reliably use when they want to be racist and exclude aliens. Thats something lore staff have strongly wanted to encourage in the past.

I'm not sure what you mean by "filling the void of pure European characters we have right now.". I can't tell whether you're saying we have too many european characters, or not enough. But both are false and the statement has a wierd air of forced diversity.

On any typical day, the manifest tends to contain a variety of anglophonic, french, german, russian, hispanic and japanese names as the most common. Arabic, chinese and african names are less common, but far from unheard of. Our station is naturally full of caucasians due to the primary demographics of the playerbase, that's not something language options are going to change.

Lore generally entertains the sol alliance as a singular entity, not really colonies of isolated nationalities. The implication up til now has been that humanity sort of works together on the interstellar stage, ui'm not really seeing the benefit of changing it.

And i think my original, quoted point, still stands. Sol Common as it is gets very infrequent use. When the probability of other humans speaking it drops from 100% to 33%, thats just going to get worse. Languages exist to communicate and are only used as long as you have someone to communicate with.

[Owen]

Lore generally entertains the sol alliance as a singular entity, not really colonies of isolated nationalities. The implication up til now has been that humanity sort of works together on the interstellar stage, ui'm not really seeing the benefit of changing it.

Unless a lore person wants to come in and correct me, the Sol Alliance is far from a singular entity. While it is technically all under the main government based on Unity Station iirc, it is made up of many colonies all colonized by different types of people. So there is quite a high chance that over time unique languages and cultures would develop. Remember, there are tons of colonies in the Sol Alliance. They are more independent and ruling themselves than you give credit for, there name is "Alliance of Sovereign Solarian States" after all.

Now to get to Mun. I quite like the idea of this, it really helps show the diversity that there is between Humans. And really, adding languages won't cut down the amount of speakers, if anything I think that it'd bring more speakers to use the new unique languages. Sol Common is one of those boring things that not many people use and I have characters that are Human and don't even speak it because they were born in linguistically unique areas of the galaxy.

I truly feel that it would give a little more life to Humans because frankly, they are quite boring. Adding this diversity is a nice touch.

This is also in the Lore Canonization area so I'll address that. I think that it fits well because it is realistic that languages will develop and evolve over time. Sol Common wasn't really a constructed language, at least from what I can tell. It seems to be more of one of things that evolved over time to make it easier to communicate between people. It does make sense that there would be different split of languages or that older Human languages evolved over time as many different nations sort of just rushed to the stars to colonize right when they could and brought their cultural identities with them. It is safe to say that many different languages evolved over time and that SC-A, B and C are just the major three.

Also, I think they could use with a better naming scheme besides just A, B and C. I feel like those may be placeholder, not sure if you addressed that.

[Fiskap]

i still don't like this because it honestly still sounds dumb, and don't support sol common being split at all.

for instance, it's dumb to assume that a non-chinese asian would adopt mandarin considering that mandarin is mostly unrelated to other east asian languages. it doesn't happen today, it won't happen in the future. it doesn't even happen in the PRC, where even ethnic chinese will stick to their chinese variety languages with millions of speakers. if anything a non-chinese asian still living on earth would probably speak their ethnic language + the version of modified english that you mentioned, which is practically what happens today. languages will hardly fall out of use for no reason, even less if they're already spoken by millions of people with a strong cultural identity that has no reason to disappear once a world government is formed.

trying to swap a system that makes no sense with another system that also makes no sense solves nothing, it just confuses people and makes them laugh at you for even suggesting it.

[VileFault]

I am inclined to agree here, but remain interested in seeing what everyone thinks about this. I thought I might offer a few clarifications, however.

 

Unless a lore person wants to come in and correct me, the Sol Alliance is far from a singular entity.

That is correct. Some members of the Sol Alliance are directly administered by it, but many are partially autonomous dependancies. Though in Tau Ceti it is easy to conceive of the ASSN as a cultural monolith, most members of the Alliance would be to differ. Travel and trade between members is more or less open, but there still exist very distinct societies in individual systems or collections thereof.

 

1) But both are false and the statement has a wierd air of forced diversity.

2) When the probability of other humans speaking it drops from 100% to 33%, thats just going to get worse.

About the diversity thing. Sure, most people who play on the server are white or hispanic, but their characters don't necessarily have to reflect this. I am personally of the opinion that, if we factored ethnicity into human factions more, people would find other races more compelling. I don't think we are discussing racial quotas, here, and there is no need to make things political.

That leads into my next point. Sol Common is rarely spoken—this is true. But I would contend that this is partially because it has no significance. If we clearly differentiated the connotations of TBC and SC (or its potential variations), we might see people using the language to establish their identity (very much like how languages are used in real life).

This ties in with my desire to create a more heterogeneous face for humanity, with competing human factions. At the moment, humans have only a handful of major issues to disagree over: synth rights, xeno rights, and the rightful place of the ASSN. What makes a person from Epsilon Eri different culturally to a person from Luna? Not a whole lot, currently. But, if each was given their own unique feel and society (as I am trying to do right now), then giving them a unique(ish) language would make a lot more sense. If my character didn't get on so well with the Tau Ceti natives or the other Alliance factions, it might be totally reasonable to speak another language when associating with my ethnic/cultural group.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Here is my response to your language suggestion when you first posted this as a lore canonization.

 

We exist on a single planet and we have more languages than there are cultures that speak them. Even within single continents there are diversities in language - europe is a prime example.

However, there is also the lingua franca - the global language. These are languages like latin, french, german, dutch, mandarin, and most recently, English.

If you expand the scope of human expansion into space, and add 400 years, it becomes an accepted aspect of scifi that the earth languages evolve into the Common Tongue.

Ideally, every other solar system would have its own unique dialect or language. But we are restricted in our mechanics, and so we have the number of languages that we have now.

All characters must speak or understand Tau Ceti Basic to work on the station. All races then have their secondary language exclusive to that race - Sol Common is that language for humanity. It would be rather unfair for humans to not have an exclusive language to let them shit talk other species, just how our other species can do around humans. The addition of Tradeband and Gutter are simply icings on the cake.

With my general policy now outlined, I'll respond to the specifics.

I do not like your origin for TCB. Languag doesn't become popular just because it's convenient, otherwise we'd all be speaking Esperanto right now.

The formality of the structure of the language is beyond me, as I'm not a linguist, but I will say that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You use "it's more simple" and "more complex' and "it's different" within the same breath; it cannot be all three, it is either simplified or complicated. The structure itself I guess can be argued night and day with... Killerhurtz? He's into things like this, he might have things to argue.

Also,

 

This was done to avoid confusion amongst the many new learners there would be, and for any species found that were possibly less intelligent than Humans or Skrell were. This proved very useful for the discovery of Unathi[...]

 

Unathi aren't retarded. I'll have you know that sinta'unathi has deep, complex meanings bearing over how you throw a spear, while their mathmatics revolves around a highly advanced form of throwing sticks together.

Anyway,

TCB is the lingua franca of Tau Ceti, and it should have its roots within the system itself and its early colonists. It is much more romantic an idea to have these languages ending up having evolved naturally. Your take on TCB is very clinical, and how it ends up coming across is almost dystopian.

Sol Common also hits the same wrong notes. I repeat my insistence that these language end up where they are through natural evolution - we don't sit around in a room and decide that all humanity must now speak x language. That's something you'd see from the Skrell - in our setting the whole aesthetic of humanity is you can't get more than 20 of them to ever agree on anything. For example, if the UN tomorrow unanimously voted on Farsi being the new global language, would you abandon English? Probably not! I wouldn't.

Once again, the formal structure goes above my head. It tickles my fancy to have a scifi language mix a bunch of modern day languages together - it's interesting to me, but that's probably a personal style choice so I won't dwell on it until my other lore devs argue with me over it.

I can only focus on the aesthetic again,

Languages can act as a glue for the culture that speaks it, and as a wall between cultures that speak seperate languages. Having TCH and Sol Common as seperate, independently-evolved languages provides yet another barrier between native Tau Ceti inhabitants and characters from Sol. It is a subtle difference between the two classes of humans that does a fantastic job of showing, not telling, the fractured, diverse state of the Sol Alliance that even core systems have developed individual lingua franca.

 

Creating several different dedicated languages for Sol Common is an interesting suggestion. I personally disagree with it because I prefer the Common Tongue trope in these settings. We simply say we adopted a new global language, but on a scale of the Galactic stage.

But if it is implemented it would be a greater use to have them distinguish the different areas humans come from - the Inner Colonies, the Middle Colonies, the Outer Colonies, and the Frontier. Human space is mindbogglingly massive, so having different languages would represent that. At the very least, make Sol Common an optional secondary language with Tau Ceti Basic being the only universal language for our station crew - to divide the Solarians from the Biesellians.

At the end of the day though, lore reinforces mechanics. So if Vilefault, our humandev, stages a coup with the developers to press this into service, I'll simply ask we try to work out the kinks I see in how you justify the languages emergence and existence - style and presentation issues, but the foundation is solid.

[Muncorn]

So, I'm no great linguist, and so I'm never too sure on how well languages would merge together and thus I may re-work SC-B a little bit to reflect Fiskap's point. As for Jackboot, that's generally the point. The idea of a common language forming is fine, sure, but I always felt like the the form of SC followed the same reasons for Gutter existing; some old dev made it up, thought it was good, and nobody else bothered to properly think about it until now; and this makes it outdated, ill-thought out, and sorely in need of some change, which is what I'm trying to do. I'll also be doing a push for a gameplay change for the languages if this gets passed, unless that'll come as a result of this.

[Bedshaped]

It doesn't make sense for English, Spanish and Portuguese to merge.

It would make much more sense for these languages to merge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

[Muncorn]

Also, for those that need the bump, added the TCB section and also modified the SC-A to be English+German, rather than English+Spanish+Portugese, due to Bedshaped, Outboard and my friend Max pointing it out for me that that's a little silly.

[VileFault]

On splitting up Sol Common, it seems like a good idea to keep in mind in the long term. Currently, we haven't created the diversity within the Sol Alliance to host these languages. We couldn't meaningfully say where each comes from, and why members of the different groups might be different.

Your thoughts on TCB seem more easily put into practice. I especially liked some of what you had here (https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=7342&p=71733#p71733). I like the idea that it was NT sponsored. Perhaps they created it from scratch some time before the formation of the Republic, or perhaps it had existed for some time and they merely repurposed it. But it seems like a plausible attempt to gain an edge over their competition by enabling them to better utilize non-human populations. Once NT adopted it, it seems clear how the newly formed Republic of Biesel would grow to use it. If NT requires the learning of this simple phonetic language to work on a number of their stations, and many (perhaps a majority) of Biesel citizens are employed by NT, then schools would have to teach it. NT outreach programs to foreign worlds could continue this trend.

Jackboot pointed out that unathi aren't retarded, and are probably capable of learning and grasping complex human speech. This is certainly true. I would think, however, that NT executives would not have at first shared this opinion. Even if they weren't dismissive of unathi intelligence, however, they would probably want to speak the learning process along and make it easier for races like the tajaran and unathi to vocalize in TCB. This brings up a further interesting point. Unathi would almost certainly see TCB as inherently condescending and distasteful. An affront to both their culture and their intelligence. It feels like the sort of vaguely nasty and discriminatory thing that a power like NT would do in the name of efficiency. Also, controlling the language gives you interesting cultural power. Hard to explore in a role playing game, but could be something to keep in the background.

Bottom line, your ideas on TCB give it some nice meaning beyond: "oh, this is just what we speak I guess." I like that! It can create some conflict, some tension. The tongue of the oppressors, eh? I will find a space for it as I go, and will talk to JB since he doesn't seem fully on board as of yet.

[Dreviore]

I'd like to think over the span of 400+ years we would have developed universal languages, sure it may not seem incredibly realistic to merge these particular languages, but its a very minor thing.

Now, I'm not either for, or against the idea of revamping them, I'll leave that for the Lore team; just know if you want a fluid, and believable dystopian future you might wish to at least acknowledge this thread, and utilize it.

[Owen]

Was this just left to die because I really liked the idea of having multiple Human languages. Especially since we are seeing a rise in other species having multiple languages.

[Superiorform]

I really like the idea of having multiple human languages, especially as the humans are meant to be quite diverse... but aren't. As has been said, how could I tell the difference between a human from earth, and a human from Biesel? I can't.

I think it would be nice to be able to distinguish humans from Elyra, maybe, who might be speaking the Arabic type, and characters with Asian descent, who could be speaking the Asian type. It would be nice for these niche characters to be able to speak with each other in private, whilst the most common type, type A, could still be spoken between most humans, and actually act as a common human language that people actually use.

So, mechanically, I like it. As for the lore aspect, I don't really like what you did, but that's more for the lore team than me.

Also, gut gutter, and trash tradeband. Plz.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I can agree to Basic being a constructed language if we make it a homage to Esperanto - it was constructed in Tau Ceti before it was independent after someone unearthed documents on esperanto and took inspiration from it. It would be the official language of Tau Ceti, and it is widely spoken elsewhere but it's not an official state sponsored language except out in the frontier somewhere

Common would be a blend of mandarin and english, which is a staple scifi trope going back for awhile. I want to get a non-european tongue in there. In addition, splitting Common into distinct languages would not be ideal. We already have four existing human languages - Basic, Common, Freespeak, and Tradeband.

Each languages has a narrative purpose that we need to consider.

The unathi have two languages, one is the language of the empire and the second is spoken by those who never fell under the sway of the empire.

The Skrell have worked for centuries to strain out non-conforming cultures to establish a single mono-culture and enforced ONE language for ONE federation.

The Tajara were divided by ethnicity and class for centuries, creating two distinct language groups.

Humanity now has four disctinct major language groups - that is more than any alien race we have.

The human languages identify the culture of the speaker and have clear stereotypes.

A person speaking Tradeband is associated with upper class snobbery.

Freespeak is the language of gunslinging martians and frontiersmen.

Basic is the Esperanto of an optimistic, inclusive Tau Ceti.

Common is the result of the Alliance being a cultural Juggernaut and attempting to culturally assimilate its many colonies and star systems.

I'm accepting most if not all elements of your suggestions but I remain unconvinced of the merits of splintering the human languages further.

[Zundy]

OwO what's this?

Tl:dr version is that we want to have three sol common languages and do away with the others that currently exist is that correct?