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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @03:43PM (2 children)
Yip. I'd emphasize that we all share a common ancestor. Not "we" as in all humans share a common ancestor - but literally everything living on this planet. You are related to.. grass. A cat is about 90% genetically similar to a human, chimps around 96%. And we went from wolves to chihuahua's in what may have been as short a time as 15,000 years. That's one severely disappointed great great great... grandfather wolf. Pups these days.
There will also be immediate as in single generation physical changes. Living in 1/3rd G is going to result in your body musculature changing radically. Astronauts see things like dramatic muscle/bone loss, vision impairment, etc just from spending a year in 0G. It's highly likely that the first generation of native Martians may not only not end up visiting Earth but may be physically incapable of it. That's going to instantly result in a radical 'species' divide even though we'd be still be quite genetically similar (how will epigenetic factors work out in entirely different environments...?) and separated by literally just one generation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @04:52PM (1 child)
I don't think any large number of humans will ever live on Mars. Everyone will just live in space habitats. They're just better in every possible way. Earth is a nice planet to live on and so most people don't conceive of living anywhere but on planets, but except for Earth, planets are terrible places to live.
10,000 years ago, there were no cities, and while people could have conceived of them, it wasn't possible. Hunter-gatherer was the only lifestyle. Today, almost everyone lives in cities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:39PM
I don't think any large number of humans will ever live on Mars. RIGHT
Everyone will just live in space habitats. WRONG
But you started so well.