Illogical Vulcans

[1001001]

I doubt it, consider today the information age is dominated by English, for some nations its the unofficial second language, but there is no way those same nation states are going to give up their native tongue and take on a foreign one, unless its enforced brutally by the state. If China becomes the number one superpower and culturally dominates the planet, do you see the USA forcing Mandarin on Americans?

Yes but look what it took for him to do so.

Not as long as a place called France exists on this Earth. I admire them for being determined to minimise as much Anglo cultural influence as possible. lol It might be a losing fight but at least they are fighting it.
In the Star Trek universe there is an official language for the planet, its called Standard and it seems to be nothing more than English. Maybe in universe its a mish mash of English, French, Mandarin and Russian.
Its a shame the TNG episode The Neutral Zone where they found 20th century people did not have those Americans waking up not understanding a word said by anyone, because the language had changed so drastically. What a missed opportunity by the writers.

Nyotarules: I've asked you before to consolidate your replies into one post.

(Reminder: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/why...t-being-military.282470/page-50#post-12058359).

Please do so from now on.

Thanks.

 

[Timo]

Its a shame the TNG episode The Neutral Zone where they found 20th century people did not have those Americans waking up not understanding a word said by anyone, because the language had changed so drastically. What a missed opportunity by the writers.

...Of course, the Universal Translator would have rendered the issue moot. Or then the story would have to have been about the UT, and how it gets turned off here, accidentally or for demonstration.

As for major languages battling, this would promote the disappearance of minor languages all the worse. I don't think French would stand a chance.

What would, in Trek? We see written English, and get puns that only work in English, but it's not absolutely clear Standard is English, given there are so extremely few characters who would not have UTs. But what else? We see cyrillic letters in "The Naked Now", but no Russian - and a lot is done in Fraktur today without it involving German in any way.

Is it realistic to assume Russian would have ceased to exist? Picard may know French out of perverse nationalistic spite, and Chekov Russian for the same reason, even if there's not a person in their worlds who could communicate with them on that language. (But why does Chekov retain his accent, or Worf's foster parents theirs, if they don't use non-English in some capacity at least?)

Chinese disappearing might be an in-universe feature. After all, China has disappeared! Not a trace of it in any Trek century. And something that big going down might well mean a vortex sucking in many other languages, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

...Of course, the Universal Translator would have rendered the issue moot. Or then the story would have to have been about the UT, and how it gets turned off here, accidentally or for demonstration.

As for major languages battling, this would promote the disappearance of minor languages all the worse. I don't think French would stand a chance.

What would, in Trek? We see written English, and get puns that only work in English, but it's not absolutely clear Standard is English, given there are so extremely few characters who would not have UTs. But what else? We see cyrillic letters in "The Naked Now", but no Russian - and a lot is done in Fraktur today without it involving German in any way.

Is it realistic to assume Russian would have ceased to exist? Picard may know French out of perverse nationalistic spite, and Chekov Russian for the same reason, even if there's not a person in their worlds who could communicate with them on that language. (But why does Chekov retain his accent, or Worf's foster parents theirs, if they don't use non-English in some capacity at least?)

Chinese disappearing might be an in-universe feature. After all, China has disappeared! Not a trace of it in any Trek century. And something that big going down might well mean a vortex sucking in many other languages, too.
Timo Saloniemi

There are around 200 nations states on Earth or whatever they will be called, to assume just cos we only see a few people from France, Scotland, England, Russia and the USA and one African, that all other regions no longer exist is as the Vulcans would say illogical.
Star Trek is not a show about the United Nations, they cannot represent every single human culture. They don't even show all the Federation ones, and they are fictional!

 

[The Old Mixer]

Considering how much division there is in my home country alone, I have no great Trekkian faith that we're in danger of developing a monocultural society and world government anytime within foreseeable human history.

 

[JRTStarlight]

But the DNA fragments were just the macroscopic puzzle pieces that drew the thing together - the 500-nanogram gorillas in the room for attention-catching. The actual programming was not stated to lie here nor there by the Ancientress.

I guess, though the puzzle could be detected so maybe we would see that. So what they're writing with is too small to discern for Trek tech, and uses some means to duplicate itself on the atomic scale. I get pretty mad when somebody carves their initials on my electrons.

I doubt that - after all, it only "directs" evolution at very specific points, turning troodons into the Voth or apes into humans. All the rest is supposedly natural, explaining why every planet comes up with different humanoids. (Although why every planet is a second California is probably attributable to the later terraforming rather than either natural or "directed" evolution.)

Why stop there? Apes into humans? And something else into Apes first? The very notion humans evolved from Apes is one of the most widely misunderstood and stated aspects of evolution (even Spock got it wrong, laying some subjective value judgments on how he describes the process). Apes and humans share common ancestry. Humans did not evolve from apes.

If the Code messed up with all of evolution, it should have very specifically culminated in the Voth and there should have been no opening for us humans. Unless we uniquely evolved naturally after the Code was done. But "The Chase" says we specifically did not. (Supposedly. Although the hologram might not have been aware of who was present, nor correctly complimenting those for their participation in the program.)

And it's aware now, too, and not just a recoding? Why not? That would be simple compared to the rest of it. And it flattered us and said humanoid and appeared humanoid because humanoids showed up, but had flying jellyfish shown up, it would have appeared as one variation on that theme and lied its ass off, since they were so lonely all they could think was how to best play practical jokes on subsequent races.

I think it's a pretty good idea to highlight the fact that we indeed know zip about how and why humans evolved (and, of course, about a zillion other evolutionary choices of lesser inherent interest). There's plenty of leeway in modern science for claiming that Poppa God did it even though everything else was Momma Nature; Trek just patches that leak with a cork of its choosing.

We "think" we know the process, and the language, but there is much we don't know and we admit it, particularly for this expression or that or how this code manifest itself or why that code has survival benefits. But this story says we don't even know that, and there is far more working at a much smaller level, and it's not a natural process. Not only don't we know, what we think we know is soooooo wrong. This isn't science fiction to me, but fantasy and magic, and I like those, too, but this goes too far, IMO, and well beyond the required elements for the exciting chase story. If you really love this episode, that's cool, but I downgrade it for some of those reasons.

That'd be less realistic, though - after four billion years, we'd have pretty much nothing in common, and certainly not enough for the story to work as an excuse for the utter uniformity seen in Trek. Although the Ancients could then be reassigned a slot mere hundreds of millions of years in the past or whatnot.

One possibility is to make them less old, sure, but just having DNA is a good start, and an actual explanation we couldn't disprove, and abundant and diverse life but common ancestry is fine, and with the added yet unexplained notions Trek also uses that the universe favors this basic form, it takes care of that, too. Needing to be humanoid isn't particularly better than sharing ancestry from some long lost ancient race.

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I doubt it, consider today the information age is dominated by English, for some nations its the unofficial second language, but there is no way those same nation states are going to give up their native tongue and take on a foreign one, unless its enforced brutally by the state. If China becomes the number one superpower and culturally dominates the planet, do you see the USA forcing Mandarin on Americans?

I could see a wise nation requiring everyone become bilingual for benefits beyond simple communication. In America, for example, it might be wise to insist on English and allow the local school board to pick the most prevalent second language for their area. From K to 12, after 13 years we'd be graduating bilingual adults.

The world government idea was required so Nationalism would play less and less of a role over time. I'm not claiming it would happen overnight, and it might take many centuries before the majority all spoke the official language of the planet, and another one of their choice. Again, if you were unaware of this, there are cognitive developmental benefits to becoming bilingual beyond just communicating with others. You just got to start out when you're young and your mind is more malleable.

In the Star Trek universe there is an official language for the planet, its called Standard and it seems to be nothing more than English.

It only seems that way through the translation of your TV. I imagine that show is translated to many languages across the world and Standard seems to be the native language in the area it is aired.

Maybe in universe its a mish mash of English, French, Mandarin and Russian.

Shiny.

Its a shame the TNG episode The Neutral Zone where they found 20th century people did not have those Americans waking up not understanding a word said by anyone, because the language had changed so drastically. What a missed opportunity by the writers.

Well, yeah, if you want a story about the difficulties of communicating. Trek avoids those, though, and the UT seems to work almost mentally and instantly everywhere. In truth, most conversation probably take at least twice as long, unless they each speak the same language. Nobody really wants to watch that.

 

[Prax]

They speak english. Out of universe and in universe. If someone in Latvia is watching TNG and hearing it in their own language, it just means their universal translator is working properly

 

[Timo]

There are around 200 nations states on Earth or whatever they will be called, to assume just cos we only see a few people from France, Scotland, England, Russia and the USA and one African, that all other regions no longer exist is as the Vulcans would say illogical. Star Trek is not a show about the United Nations, they cannot represent every single human culture. They don't even show all the Federation ones, and they are fictional!

Still, it's three or four real nations and then a bit under 200 midgets. Absence of evidence of China seems like worrisome evidence of absence of China. Why should a minor power like the US feature in the show at all?

We need a rationale going beyond statistics to squeeze China out of the show but not out of existence altogether, or else there'd be at least fifty Chinese characters to every non-Chinese one.

Mind you, it's valid scifi to say that China no longer is. It just hasn't been said yet. Saying India no longer is would be only slightly more difficult - we have seen characters who are more likely to be Indian than not Indian (name, looks), but those could exist even if India has ceased to. Saying France no longer is ups the ante, because we have seen French locations firsthand. and that's as far as we get, because we can't prove France exists as a nation (as opposed to a historical region), and there are no better candidates, either, not beyond 2079.

It's just curious that France sits at the top of the existence hierarchy while China sits so low down that there isn't even a single character with unambiguously Chinese name and looks. (Or does Lian T'Su qualify, with suitably adjusted spelling?)

Timo Saloniemi