A random thread on science fiction and the future of language.

Why? See my other tweets. It’s Friday night and I’ve been in quarantine with the kids for a week. Plus I just finished @ExpanseOnPrime.

So, why not? Ok, here we go. (1/n)

First, the ideas in this thread follow very loosely from @Ada_Palmer’s essay about how the name future generations give this time period says a lot about where we are and where we are headed. You can read it here:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/03/06/what-the-future-will-call-this-era/

(2/n)

So, Watching Expanse and remembering Palmer’s essay got me thinking. For sci-fi that takes place in a human future, what language(s) are spoken would seem to say a lot about what the writer or writers think about (implicitly or explicitly) about the path from now to then (3/n)

Obviously, most work written in English or for an English audience will have people in the future speaking some form of English. But think about that for a moment. That implies that English basically continues to take over the world over hundreds of years (4/n)

But what about Chinese or French or Arabic or sci-fi written originally in any other language? What would it imply if 400 years from now, the “lingual Franca” in space was Arabic. Or Swahili? (5/n)

I’m just starting to read sci-fi from China for example, but it is obviously in translation. So, quick question for anybody who reads non-English sci-fi. What is the language of the future in what you are reading (6/n)

Now, let’s turn back to @ExpanseOnPrime. For those that haven’t read or seen, here’s what’s important for purposes of this thread. It’s a few centuries from now, humans are on Mars and in the asteroid belt. But three separate polities. Earth (plus Luna) vs. Mars vs. Belters. 7/n

Earthers and Martians basically speak English. It’s very multi-racial but all the dialogue between characters is in English. There is some indication of persistence of other languages in names (e.g. Chinese) and a couple scenes on Mars with an automated voice in non-English (8/n)

So, Earth and Mars have people whose origins are clearly from all over the current globe but everyone basically speaks English. They are also the two dominant powers. Interesting. So, English has taken over pretty completely? (9/n)

But what about the Belt. Here’s where it gets more complex. The Belters are socio-economically and politically ruled by Earth and Mars (and don’t like it, especially as the Belt is the source of much of the resources Mars and Earth use). (10/n)

But Belters don’t speak the same English as Martians and Earthers. Yes, there is English in there, but they speak a language that seems to be an amalgam of a whole bunch of earth languages. I caught what sounds like it could be from Spanish or French, Hindi, others. (11/n)

And that’s not just the automated voice on the subway, like Mars. No, this is all belters speaking to each other. It is its own language. So, how did that happen. Why did two of the three societies become dominated by English as spoken today while the Belt develops belter? 12/n

And why is the one society that creates this syncretic language the one that is the low income underclass workers exploited by the others? Like i said, all three seem to draw people from all regions of current Earth. 13/n

So, were Belters the first out there? Before English became so dominant back on Earth, before Mars was colonized. When those that populated the Belt came from all over Earth but had retained their languages? (14/n)

How long would it take under those circumstances for a new language to emerge, one that borrowed and melded together many Earth languages? And why did this just happen in the Belt. Why not back on Earth? (15/n)

I don’t have answers for any of those questions, but I find it interesting to think about. When we think about what Sci-Fi can tell us about our present and near future in terms of politics, economics, social relations, it might be useful to also think about language. 16/n