Spoken Languages In The Honorverse ...

JohnRoth wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I have been told, by various French speakers, that the French used Quebec is fairly close to the way French was used in the mid-18th century than tha the language used in France today.

French was the diplomatic language in the 18th and much of the 19th century and earlier.
The reasons you find French, German and Portuguese being used in various African countries can be traced back to the various colonial holding in Afirca in the 17th, 18th and 19th century. Portuguese going back further since they were setting up 1st trade/logisitic stations much earlier than anyone else then taking over some of the surrounding area. Dutch is the basis for Africaans in South Africa, that country being held by the Dutch before the English took over.

Untill relativly late in the 20th century, the English spoken locally by the inhabitants of Tangier Is in VA (southern end of Chesapeak Bay) was fairly close to Elizabethan English as noted in a couple of linguistic studies.

I've seen it noted somewhere that the larger the language community, the faster it mutates. On the other hand, some of the differences are deliberate: Noah Webster changed "colour" to "color" in his dictionary. He wanted a uniquely American style.

Relax wrote:Well, it could be worse, like in SG-1... Where the entire universe magically speaks English which never existed when all of those people got removed from Earth to start with...

n7axw wrote:If anyone is interested to see an illustration of how language evolves, go back and read the King James Bible in which the meanings of about 15% of the vocabulary has shifted in meaning in our own time, rendering the KJV an uncomfortable read.

cthia wrote:I can easily get on this bus. I've preached since I first joined the forum that language is not a static phenomena, nor should it be. Language is meant to evolve. It is derived from experiences and a need to communicate. Experiences are forever changing. Language learns itself.

Demographics strongly influences language. A space- faring species would have many experiences foreign to one who is not. Etc.

If the story of the Tower of Babel bears some semblance of truth and mankind initially spoke one language then that was a very powerful language, if only from a spoken commonality. If indeed a God scattered the people to hinder their communication and as a result there ensued a babbling, then language inherently enjoys an innate momentum to relearn itself.

I communicated this at length with a professor regarding my thoughts after I read a paper of hers.
https://www.njcu.edu/cill/vol4/mascali.html

SWM wrote:May I recommend Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson? As my daughter said recently after I introduced her to it, "Any book that can plausibly intertwine Sumerian mythology, Chomskian linguistics, and virtual reality has to be interesting."

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:May I recommend Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson? As my daughter said recently after I introduced her to it, "Any book that can plausibly intertwine Sumerian mythology, Chomskian linguistics, and virtual reality has to be interesting."

Snow Crash is completely insane. But great.

Relax wrote:Hey, I am just happy my first language is English, my second is Spanish. Pretty much covers the world currently.

I always find it interesting watching foreign films and noting how much of their own dialog I can understand without subbing. It is frankly quite a bit.