Let's have a talk about languages.

[Guest]

No, I don't mean the in-game languages. I mean using non-English language in the common language. The common languages is an amalgamation of English and Mandarin, I believe, but the point is, that you shouldn't be speaking languages other than English for common. Foreign languages are Tradeband and Gutter.

French, German, even English are all dead languages, something nobody would speak in normal conversation, other than a few sparse words. And don't bring in the argument that people speak Latin. People do not speak Latin. The amount of people in the world who can hold a full conversation in Latin could be counted on my fingers and toes. I exaggerate, but nobody speaks dead languages. That's why they're dead.

[Erik Tiber]

No, I don't mean the in-game languages. I mean using non-English language in the common language. The common languages is an amalgamation of English and Mandarin, I believe, but the point is, that you shouldn't be speaking languages other than English for common. Foreign languages are Tradeband and Gutter.

French, German, even English are all dead languages, something nobody would speak in normal conversation, other than a few sparse words. And don't bring in the argument that people speak Latin. People do not speak Latin. The amount of people in the world who can hold a full conversation in Latin could be counted on my fingers and toes. I exaggerate, but nobody speaks dead languages. That's why they're dead.

I see no reason for these other languages to be dead. Language contains a massive amount of cultural information. It is a central part of a people's identity. I can't see Russians abandoning Russian for English at home, and thus giving up so much of what makes them Russian. Same with so many other languages. Once you lose the language, the rest of the culture normally follows. It strains suspension of disbelief.

This also eliminates a lot of RP potential.

English can simply be the lingua franca, the common language which everyone knows but which is only the native language of a few. It is the common economic language right now, and use of English is viewed by linguists as increasing. Apparently English is becoming widespread enough that its use is less heavily politicized. After all, if a Swedish tourist is using English to talk to a Brazilian cab driver, neither of them is thinking about America's foreign policy.

[Gollee]

The amount of people in the world who can hold a full conversation in Latin could be counted on my fingers and toes.

 

Hello

On topic now, it would be very unlikely for major languages (major in this case standing in for widely spoken or from an economic powerhouse, like Japan/ Germany) to go extinct. They would be much less common, however, but they would probably still be spoken by smaller factions.

[Erik Tiber]

In fact, with Earth still surviving, I'd imagine that many of the minor languages would still survive on their homeworld. At least several hundred, even if many of the several thousand marginal languages unfortunately go extinct (which they are on their way to doing).

In space, the situation may come to resemble India a bit. Their common business language is English, although a wide variety of other languages are spoken at home. The difference is that in this case English is also the home language for the descendants of American, British, and various Commonwealth colonists.

I only state this due to what losing a language represents, and thus how far people are likely to go to preserve it. When tribes in the United States want to preserve their own culture, one of the primary goals is preserving the language. If English has somehow become the home language for a majority of the population, then that would mean most of the world's population has abandoned their culture for a more anglicized version, meaning that we basically have Space America. This would be rather unfortunate.

I do realize that this could seem a bit 'snowflakey' to have people speaking foreign languages. However, that would miss the point of the term snowflakey. If it is statistically likely for player characters to know another language, given the premise of the setting, then it would not be snowflakey for the characters to know this. It is good to give players a variety of choices for their backgrounds, especially if giving them this choice does not strain suspension of disbelief. Yes, it is important for players to communicate in an intelligible manner over comms. People abusing comms to speak in other languages can simply be dealt with ICly, like with many other problems. Nanotrasen requires everyone be able to speak Basic for a reason, and they would enforce this policy.

[Rusty Shackleford]

meaning that we basically have Space America. This would be rather unfortunate.

 

Speak for yourself, you space commie. Hue.

But in all honesty, the way english (or Tau Ceti Basic as we're pretending it is) is spoken by everyone on the station makes IC sense, because after all, most of the people would probably come from the core world of Biesel that's literally a hop, skip and an FTL jump away from the station.

[Conservatron]

I'd imagine language is taught much like in europe today

you learn your primary language along side like three other languages. I have a friend from Poland who, since grade school, has been learning Polish German Russian and English and is totally fluent in three of them.

Humanity, as a whole, is fiercely protective of its culture, I can't imagine major groups allowing their languages to die

[Serveris]

Lore dev fight commences. Let's see how this ends.