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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)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Friday July 10 2020, @11:05AM (1 child)
I disagree on a number of levels.
A bit of slang and technical terms? That's where the majority of change is. I think you're confusing it with grammar. And having learned a second language as an older adult, I can say grammar is the easy part of a language to learn. Think of Yoda and his backward speaking way. We can still understand him quite well. Most common words change meaning over time and some change very radically. (Look at how the word "sick" now means "great". Before that, we could "get down with the sickness" which could be interpreted a few different ways. )
I disagree here too. We lost a lot of words, but gained a lot too. The terms "driving a car" or "steering an automobile" didn't exist. The idea of driving a horse or steering a buggy did exist, but the meanings of "drive" and "steer" have significantly changed and do not mean the same thing if we compare their application between horse and car.
Disclaimer: I may have experience with a secondary language, but I don't have the 411 on linguistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @03:33PM
You're considering short term trends in a language. Phrases like "that's sick" become pretty cringe worthy within a single lifetime and die shortly thereafter. They're just not radical enough, dooood.
While surfing the web I found this [litcharts.com] bodacious list of *some* of the words Shakespeare invented. I think most don't realize what he achieved. Aside from amazing literature his additions to the language were not short lived slang or whatever, but a rather substantial reshaping of the language to be more expressive. Not all of his inventions stood the test of time but a rather large amount did and you'll wonder how awkward it must have been to express such basic notions prior to the 16th century. Which leads to a natural truism: when languages lack expressiveness they tend to grow. As they achieve sufficient expressiveness, or the intelligence/education of the speaking population declines, the languages become subsets of themselves.
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Reread the article (or read it for the first time). They are literally suggesting that people would become mutually unintelligible to one another. Not that somebody might not immediately grasp the latest technological developments or whatever, but that 'Hi - how are you doing?' would be pushing towards incomprehensible - after 10 generations. It's hyperbolic.