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posted by martyb on Friday July 10 2020, @05:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Rendevous-with-Rama dept.

Languages will change significantly on interstellar flights:

In this study, McKenzie and Punske discuss how languages evolve over time whenever communities grow isolated from one another. This would certainly be the case in the event of a long interstellar voyage and/or as a result of interplanetary colonization. Eventually, this could mean that the language of the colonists would be unintelligible to the people of Earth, should they meet up again later.

[...] To illustrate, McKenzie and Punske use examples of different language families on Earth and how new languages emerged due to distance and time. They then extrapolated how this same process would occur over the course of 10 generations or more of interstellar/interplanetary travel. As McKenzie explained in a UK press release:

"If you're on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them, and these will become the vocabulary particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there's a reason to tell them. And the further away you get, the less you're going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and there's no one really back home to talk to. And there's not much you want to tell them, because they'll only find out years later, and then you'll hear back from them years after that."

There are always emojis...

Journal Reference:
McKenzie, A., Punske, J.. Language Development During Interstellar Travel, Acta Futura, (12), 123–132. (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3747353)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday July 10 2020, @06:21AM (6 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday July 10 2020, @06:21AM (#1018979) Journal

    Pretty soon we won't be able to speak the Queen's English!

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:27AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:27AM (#1018990)

    So will you? Your vulgar and unintelligible gibberish from over this little pool of water of ours (and it is really ours) is hard to bear even now.
     

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday July 10 2020, @05:04PM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday July 10 2020, @05:04PM (#1019155) Journal

      :-) What, are you that weak? You gotta keep your blinders on!

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:28AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:28AM (#1018991)

    To be fair, have you heard pommies speak these days, innit?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:29PM (#1019545)

      Maaaaaate, you can talk.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @09:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @09:05AM (#1018998)

    I know you are joking, but actually, it is a bit the opposite. Which is also my comment on the article, it not not sufficiently acknowledge this, despite identifying language evolution that is already going on.

    On earth at least, languages in the colonies seem to have changed _slower_ than the language of the originating countries (at least in the initial years after the separation). Afrikaans still sounds much like 17th century Dutch, and American spell words like the Queen did 400 years ago. Curses in Quebecois...well, lets say they sound pretty archaic. Of course there are many other factors (the sub-populations of people who did the colonization, leveling of dialects in the colonies, etc)

    Of course, in some cases, the new language (Afrikaans) because somewhat pidginized because of external influences. And indeed, as the article says, are influenced by local occurrences. But it is silly to think the the original language would not be far more influenced by development of the world, which has a far bigger population with more external influences (from other languages and dialects), and thus likely to go even faster[1].

    [1] doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1419704112

  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 10 2020, @02:48PM

    by Freeman (732) on Friday July 10 2020, @02:48PM (#1019081) Journal

    Good.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"