Futuristic Language
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ConlangArtist
Futuristic Language
Zompist, you said that you had or toiled with a scifi universe with interstellar travel etc etc, have you made any people for it?? Languages? Cultures? I am working with my conlang which is set up in a larger, interplanetary, inter system, inter galactic setting. Do you have any recommendations on how to create a language for something like that?[/b]
Re: Futuristic Language
Well, a lot depends on the scale of time and the degree of contact between star systems. If you respect Einstein, for instance, planets can have very little contact with each other, and the language of colonies will diverge very quickly from that of the home planet. If travel can be faster than light but is still relatively expensive, languages would still diverge, but a common trade/administration language would be shared by those who had to use it.
Galaxies are a lot farther apart than stars, and it stretches credulity (more than s.f. usually does) to have easy travel between them.
What sort of aliens you have is the most important factor, of course. Do the different species even have a common medium of communication? (Sound is a good way of communicating, but one can easily imagine species that use something else.) Not all species would have the same level of intelligence; perhaps some languages are just too hard to learn.
It's very hard to invent really alien languages (Klingon isn't alien at all). Still, it's fun to try. Even when you're inventing a language for humans, it's worth asking yourself at every point what might vary from English and how. With aliens, you optimally start asking questions which no one has even asked before.
Galaxies are a lot farther apart than stars, and it stretches credulity (more than s.f. usually does) to have easy travel between them.
What sort of aliens you have is the most important factor, of course. Do the different species even have a common medium of communication? (Sound is a good way of communicating, but one can easily imagine species that use something else.) Not all species would have the same level of intelligence; perhaps some languages are just too hard to learn.
It's very hard to invent really alien languages (Klingon isn't alien at all). Still, it's fun to try. Even when you're inventing a language for humans, it's worth asking yourself at every point what might vary from English and how. With aliens, you optimally start asking questions which no one has even asked before.
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ConlangArtist
For instance, my governemnt that holds worlds together is The ASCR also known as the All-Systems Celestial Republic or The Republic for short. There is a common language (Common). Plus there is a faster-than-light from of travel known as Meta-Drive... which is quite expensive, there is also more forms of FTL travel... and I factored how far away glaalxies were but Meta-Drive makes it possible to travel between the two... my only problem is even with all these ways to keep a language form diverging too much... would the language Common still splinter into little shards of sisters languages etc?? Thanks for your time Z.
Well, think about who speaks it and how much contact they have with people from outsystem. People who travel to or communicate with other systems a lot would help even out variations, much as global English is maintained today. If there's people who speak Common natively but hardly ever interact with offworlders, their version of the language will probably diverge-- you could get a situation like medieval Europe or China, where the elite know the classical written language and the masses speak a number of more evolved variants.ConlangArtist wrote:For instance, my governemnt that holds worlds together is The ASCR also known as the All-Systems Celestial Republic or The Republic for short. There is a common language (Common). Plus there is a faster-than-light from of travel known as Meta-Drive... which is quite expensive, there is also more forms of FTL travel... and I factored how far away glaalxies were but Meta-Drive makes it possible to travel between the two... my only problem is even with all these ways to keep a language form diverging too much... would the language Common still splinter into little shards of sisters languages etc?? Thanks for your time Z.
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ConlangArtist
Zompist sorry to bother you like this over and over again, but here goes.. when you made sisters languages for Vedurian.. you made a certain amount of changes to Cadhinor to make these changes to the sister languages. I could probably do the same thing to Common well at least to some degree right? Or would that make a completely different language?? Or would it just create a dialect?