Is the English language lingua franca?

[Christopher]

English is quite easy to learn compared to other languages.

Funny, I've often heard people say the reverse. English is such a hodgepodge compared to many languages, a Frankensteinian merger of elements from multiple linguistic origins, with wildly inconsistent spelling compared to most languages.

Speaking foreign languages (for example English) is usually considered an advantage, so institutions in most countries offer that option. It doesn't say that much about how the government of that country views other countries that have it as their native language.

Even in North Korea, people can learn English. (Well, probably only when you're deemed suitable by the government, but still.)

As long as English is the international language of commerce and business, governments that want to make money will be fine with teaching English, no matter how they feel about any given English-speaking country's political system.

 

[Frontis]

My mother language is German and I find it more complicated than English.

 

[David cgc]

Funny, I've often heard people say the reverse. English is such a hodgepodge compared to many languages, a Frankensteinian merger of elements from multiple linguistic origins, with wildly inconsistent spelling compared to most languages.

On the other hand, that might make it more forgiving. There's an emerging dialect of "Euro-English" from a bunch of people of different backgrounds who speak English as a second language using it in a political/legalistic way. There are other cases where you can tell an international correspondent from unique diction even in writing.

There's the future of English for you; Dozens of mutually-intelligible descendant languages all made of a shambling pile of shibboleths.

 

[Frontis]

Yes when you travel around in Europe with most people you can comunicate in English.

 

[at Quark's]

^These days, probably.

But even only 30 years ago, English wouldn't bring me all that far in Europe. I really couldn't expect people to speak English on a conversational level back then, unless they were highly educated. Switching to another language (depending on the region, e.g. German in middle Europe, French in Romanic language countries) would give me much better odds. Chances any 'random' European person speaks English seem much better nowadays. I think it has everything to do with the arrival of internet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I've read the Gold Key comics, so I know they all speak Esperanto

 

[Arpy]

In some of the books they speak "Anglish," a futuristic version of American English. That's one of the Federation languages anyway. Linguacode has been mentioned numerous times as a way to facilitate communication during first contact or when the universal translator doesn't work. In the treklit it was invented by Hoshi Sato, so maybe it's easy to learn and speak and many do.

I'm uncomfortable with modern English being the lingua franca of the Federation because, well, isn't that convenient. I'd rather they come up with some supremely sophisticated, pleasant, and easy interstellar Esperanto called Federation Standard.

Plus, I mean have you heard some of the Gen Z slang? English isn't going to sound like it does today in 400 years. Especially not as it evolves over thousands of planets and trillions of people. So, I take the English we see and hear more as a placeholder for whatever they're actually using. Especially where it's already dated in phrasing or delivery.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

English is quite easy to learn compared to other languages.

I have many, many students who would take serious issue with this statement.

I take issue with it as a teacher.

English is a mess of a language to learn. There have been calls to reform it for many, many years precisely because of how inconsistent and difficult to learn it can be.

 

[Citiprime]

It could also be a vestige of first contact.

Cochrane and Lily were presumably Americans (if the United States still existed in 2063) and spoke English. The first dialogue with aliens was conducted in English and it stuck.

It's also notable that every other planet where we've heard a language or seen written script has a singular language that's representative for the entire society. There's only people speaking "Klingon," not speaking a certain dialect of Klingon or a language native to the southern hemisphere of Qo'Nos.

 

[Christopher]

In some of the books they speak "Anglish," a futuristic version of American English. That's one of the Federation languages anyway.

That was Diane Duane's coinage, I believe.

Linguacode has been mentioned numerous times as a way to facilitate communication during first contact or when the universal translator doesn't work. In the treklit it was invented by Hoshi Sato, so maybe it's easy to learn and speak and many do.

And that originated in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Its only other mentions were in TNG: "Tin Man" and in ENT: "In a Mirror Darkly, Part II," which was the source of the claim that Hoshi invented it.

Linguacode isn't a language, though; it's a translation matrix, a sort of Rosetta Stone that can facilitate translation across a language barrier. I assume it's something that begins with universal mathematical and physical constants that every society would have, then builds on that foundation.

I'm uncomfortable with modern English being the lingua franca of the Federation because, well, isn't that convenient. I'd rather they come up with some supremely sophisticated, pleasant, and easy interstellar Esperanto called Federation Standard.

On the one hand, as I've said, it makes sense to me that spacegoing human civilization would have English as its first lingua franca, since it's currently the universal language of aerospace, science, engineering, commerce, etc. However, it seems more plausible that a multispecies interstellar civilization would develop a creole of its members' languages -- much like English evolved as a blend of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and French/Latin antecedents as a result of conquest and settlement. By the 23rd or certainly the 24th century, Federation English should have a liberal admixture of Vulcan and Andorian vocabulary and grammar at least.

Plus, I mean have you heard some of the Gen Z slang? English isn't going to sound like it does today in 400 years. Especially not as it evolves over thousands of planets and trillions of people. So, I take the English we see and hear more as a placeholder for whatever they're actually using. Especially where it's already dated in phrasing or delivery.

Except it's been explicitly shown that people from the 20th or 21st century can understand their language without translators being needed. McCoy didn't have his communicator when Edith Keeler tended to him, but they understood each other perfectly. And every time a character from the past has said "You speak English!," the Starfleet characters have just said "Yes" instead of saying "No, our Spaceperanto is being translated for your benefit."

It's implausible, yes, but it's a hell of a lot less implausible than magic universal translators that work instantly on previously unknown languages and always convey correct meanings and idioms accurately.

 

[Arpy]

It's implausible, yes, but it's a hell of a lot less implausible than magic universal translators that work instantly on previously unknown languages and always convey correct meanings and idioms accurately.

We’ll have real time translation into any language in the next decade. By the 23rd-24th century it would be science fiction not to have that kind of translation ability.

And complete fantasy that it looks and sounds just like contemporary English. That on some ships you’re hearing 1960’s American English TV dialogue, others 1980’s, and others 2000’s.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

We’ll have real time translation into any language in the next decade.

Do you think it will be able to translate previously unknown languages? As Christopher said?

 

[Christopher]

We’ll have real time translation into any language in the next decade. By the 23rd-24th century it would be science fiction not to have that kind of translation ability.

And it would be foolhardy to assume that even that would be able to translate every meaning and idiom faithfully so that there are never any misunderstandings. Many things are impossible to translate accurately between languages, because there are no one-to-one equivalents for them. The best that can be managed is an approximation that compromises or substitutes the meaning.

For instance, subtitlers of Japanese film and TV have a hard time translating shikkari shiro, the default interjection when trying to rouse an unconscious or injured character; it literally translates as "tighten/stabilize yourself," but the closest approximation, "Pull yourself together," seems oddly harsh and judgmental to use on someone unconscious that you're worried about. Some translators just ditch the literal meaning and go for "Wake up!" or "Can you hear me?" or something that fits the context more than the words. A machine translation wouldn't necessarily be able to make that judgment. Then there's the perennial yurusenai, the closest roughly literal translation for which is "I won't forgive you," but it's really somewhere between that and "I won't allow you," so in many contexts a better translation of the sense of it would be "You'll never get away with it!" or "I'll stop you!" At best, even the most accurate machine translation would have quirks like that, phrasings that don't really sound right in context. Or else they'd only be approximations that lose some of the speaker's intended meaning, which could lead to miscommunications of a sort you never see in fiction where UTs are used.

Not to mention that real-time translation couldn't work, because not every language uses the same word order. A lot of Japanese sentence structures are the inverse of English. For instance, instead of "I'm Christopher, a 26-year-veteran science fiction writer who has a story collection coming out soon," it would be more like, oh, say, "A 26-year veteran writer of science fiction who soon has a story collection coming out, Christopher I am." So you'd have to wait for the speaker to finish the sentence before you could get an accurate translation. The kind of instantaneous translation you see in fiction is a simplification for dramatic convenience. It would never actually let you, say, fool pre-contact aliens into believing you were speaking their language fluently. (I love the way Star Trek Beyond handled machine translation, practically the only time Trek has ever depicted it realistically. Although I think there was a scene in Discovery season 1 with Burnham on a Klingon bridge that did it similarly.)

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

However, it seems more plausible that a multispecies interstellar civilization would develop a creole of its members' languages -- much like English evolved as a blend of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and French/Latin antecedents as a result of conquest and settlement. By the 23rd or certainly the 24th century, Federation English should have a liberal admixture of Vulcan and Andorian vocabulary and grammar at least.

Unless there was a deliberate effort not to, or at least not to make it the default. That is, such collaborative languages may exist, but they co-exist with the English we would recognize.

 

[Christopher]

Unless there was a deliberate effort not to, or at least not to make it the default. That is, such collaborative languages may exist, but they co-exist with the English we would recognize.

I dunno... Languages tend to evolve organically no matter what official efforts might be made to prevent it. Probably most creole languages were officially objected to or suppressed when they were new, but they eventually became standard through generations of use.

 

[Arpy]

Do you think it will be able to translate previously unknown languages? As Christopher said?

Yes. UT may not always be perfect (as it’s shown at times not to be), but for the most part, sure. They can warp the space time continuum and make you energy and back. Some future scanner reading your brainwaves and software then playing with syntax is entirely within the realm of possibility.

And it would be foolhardy to assume that even that would be able to translate every meaning and idiom faithfully so that there are never any misunderstandings. Many things are impossible to translate accurately between languages, because there are no one-to-one equivalents for them. The best that can be managed is an approximation that compromises or substitutes the meaning.

For instance, subtitlers of Japanese film and TV have a hard time translating shikkari shiro, the default interjection when trying to rouse an unconscious or injured character; it literally translates as "tighten/stabilize yourself," but the closest approximation, "Pull yourself together," seems oddly harsh and judgmental to use on someone unconscious that you're worried about. Some translators just ditch the literal meaning and go for "Wake up!" or "Can you hear me?" or something that fits the context more than the words. A machine translation wouldn't necessarily be able to make that judgment. Then there's the perennial yurusenai, the closest roughly literal translation for which is "I won't forgive you," but it's really somewhere between that and "I won't allow you," so in many contexts a better translation of the sense of it would be "You'll never get away with it!" or "I'll stop you!" At best, even the most accurate machine translation would have quirks like that, phrasings that don't really sound right in context. Or else they'd only be approximations that lose some of the speaker's intended meaning, which could lead to miscommunications of a sort you never see in fiction where UTs are used.

Not to mention that real-time translation couldn't work, because not every language uses the same word order. A lot of Japanese sentence structures are the inverse of English. For instance, instead of "I'm Christopher, a 26-year-veteran science fiction writer who has a story collection coming out soon," it would be more like, oh, say, "A 26-year veteran writer of science fiction who soon has a story collection coming out, Christopher I am." So you'd have to wait for the speaker to finish the sentence before you could get an accurate translation. The kind of instantaneous translation you see in fiction is a simplification for dramatic convenience. It would never actually let you, say, fool pre-contact aliens into believing you were speaking their language fluently. (I love the way Star Trek Beyond handled machine translation, practically the only time Trek has ever depicted it realistically. Although I think there was a scene in Discovery season 1 with Burnham on a Klingon bridge that did it similarly.)

See above.

 

[Christopher]

Yes. UT may not always be perfect (as it’s shown at times not to be), but for the most part, sure. They can warp the space time continuum and make you energy and back. Some future scanner reading your brainwaves and software then playing with syntax is entirely within the realm of possibility.

But that's the whole point -- those are all acceptable implausibilities for the sake of drama. My original point was that people hundreds of years from now speaking recognizable present-day English is also implausible, but not nearly as implausible as a perfect instantaneous translator that works on previously unknown languages. It's all just poetic license to one degree or another.

 

[Arpy]

But that's the whole point -- those are all acceptable implausibilities for the sake of drama. My original point was that people hundreds of years from now speaking recognizable present-day English is also implausible, but not nearly as implausible as a perfect instantaneous translator that works on previously unknown languages. It's all just poetic license to one degree or another.

Warp may take a thousand years instead of a hundred, but one can still see that happening. One can hope and dream for it. Language not changing is…lol “a failure of imagination.” It is not dreaming and hoping and spinning an interesting tale based on the realities of how language evolves and who we might one day be. Pass.

 

[Christopher]

Language not changing is…lol “a failure of imagination.”

No, as I said, it's conscious artistic license for the sake of audience comprehension and storytelling convenience. These stories pretend to be set in the future, but they are written for a present-day audience, so obviously they must be made accessible to that audience. If you can suspend disbelief about something as nonsensical as humanoid aliens, it's bizarre to be unwilling to suspend disbelief about language permanence.

 

[Arpy]

No, as I said, it's conscious artistic license for the sake of audience comprehension and storytelling convenience. These stories pretend to be set in the future, but they are written for a present-day audience, so obviously they must be made accessible to that audience. If you can suspend disbelief about something as nonsensical as humanoid aliens, it's bizarre to be unwilling to suspend disbelief about language permanence.

It’s not artistic license. There’s no need to even mention what they’re speaking. You could let the audience conjecture. The audience gets the humanoids same as they do the makeup and lighting and effects. Still the shows that nod to the universe not being all humanoids are the ones who do it better. The use of English is the same as the use of Earth as the capital and leader and cultural and technological hegemon. It’s just cheesy Flash Gordon writing, and there’s little reason for it. Do they think we’re bigots. Truth, justice, and the American way, or we send in the Star Destroyers. Again, pass.