Perhaps they're not speaking English at all. Maybe they're speaking a 24th century language descended from English; and we are just hearing/seeing English through the UTs in our TVs.
The old FASA RPG explains it in exactly this way. I vaguely remember them calling the language something like "Galacta" or "Galactic Standard", which also happens to be 99% English.
I don't see how the UT would affect languages on Earth though?
That's a good point. Nobody would need to learn a standard language because, in their perception, everyone was speaking everyone else's native language flawlessly. Don't know - and one more inconsistency on the effects the UT would have on multiple cultures in the same general vicinity. By this logic, you're right, French should still be a dominant language on Earth. It was, after all, the "language of diplomacy" in the modern era, due to its specific and unambiguous use of vocabulary and grammar. It would make more sense if the Federation, being a diplomatically-oriented organization, adapt French as its primary language.
Maybe the E-Con did wipe out most of France during WWIII as
CorporalCaptain suggested.
Surely if an Italian is speaking to a German (using the UT) there is no need for any English at all. The UT is a different issue.
My understanding was that English had become the dominant, first language on Earth (presumably before the UT was invented) and other languages had massively declined in use. If that's not the case then I'm confused. So was Picard speaking French all that time on TNG and we just didn't know it?
This would be my bet then, based on this reasoning. Everyone perceives everyone else's speech as their native language. It still doesn't adequately explain the Klingon and Bajoran exceptions (or Romulan with the whole "Jolan-tru" bit in "Reunification").
Depends on how the UT works, if it's a brain implant (or connected in some fashion to the brain) then you would conceptualize mentally what you want to say, and the UT controls what you actually say (lungs, vocal cords, tounge, lips) . You might not even understand what you're saying if you heard it.
I like this reasoning. It almost has an HGTTG Babel Fish aspect to it, where the UT is not just a Google-translate-like device, but imbued with an advanced adaptive AI capable of adjusting brain wave patterns of the owner, allowing them to actually speak the language of the person to whom they are speaking. And how could it so quickly learn a language it's never even heard before with only a few words unless it was in proximity with the other speaker, to the point that it could pick up on brain wave patterns? This treads more deeply into science fantasy than science fiction, but still as good an explanation as any that I could think of.
The way DS9 handled the U.T. question in "Little Green Men" was fascinating, but presented some additional questions. Such as, even if the humans heard English, the Ferengi were still clearly speaking Ferenginar...or whatever their native language is...so why do we hear English and see their mouths also moving in English? Theoretically, it should look like a poorly-dubbed anime, with lip motions in no way syncing with what is being heard.
I seem to recall VOY had episodes where the audio did not match the lip movements when they were communicating ship-to-ship and the image was on the main viewscreen. At least a couple of episodes.
Really? It's quite possible, but I honestly don't recall that. Maybe I saw it, chalked it up to bad editing in post and forgot all about it.
