Indo
Welcome to Solaris, traveller! This is a slower-than-light science fantasy set in our own solar system.
About Solaris | Guide to Solaris | Prologue
About Solaris | Guide to Solaris | Prologue
Lingua Franca of Solaris
My words flow like ooblek; in nasty little clusters. On the broadcasts they speak like a song. I sound strangled, despite speaking it long enough to wilt my mother tongue. If Indo is the language of the stars, I have my feet firmly planted in the dirt.
Indo, also known as Sol Standard, Chronish or Fainon, is a spoken and written humanoid language originally from Saturn. It is by far the most common second language in the Sol System, and the twelfth most common spoken native language overall. It is the official language of Saturn and Mars. Like most humanoid spoken languages, Indo requires at least one mouth with a vocal tract, or a synthesizer.
History
There's been several trade languages over the years, but Indo gained its initial foothold alongside the Interlace, a system of cross-space communication first established between the moons of Saturn. As the default language of SWAN and other early forms of Interlace, Indo became associated with modern space travel. Indo played a special role in the modernization of Martian society. The language was mandated as the offical working language of Mars in an attempt to abolish cultural hierachies in the workplace. The prominence of Martian and Saturnian tech, both produced primarily in Indo, has contributed to it's dominance system-wide.Many of the people who use Indo in their day to day life rely entirely upon technology to understand and communicate. Indo is by far the easiest language to find translation gadgets for, from translation lenses to plug and play implants. The sophistication and capabilities of these devices varies heavily with price.
Some even go so far as to claim the proliferation of bargain bin devices is to blame for the pidgin Indo spoken in the asteroid belt and other isolated regions.
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Oo, I like this! Thanks for sharing the prompt, too, because the ONLY language that I've bothered to define in my head is...a trade language!! Languages are something that I've not really thought much about, yet. Because I'm only focusing on one continent, for the moment, and it has a long history where it was united under one government, I think I'm probably dealing more with dialects, at least for the last several thousand years. Because it's a diaspora and trade is essential for everyone's survival, I cannot imagine that even in 5800+ years since The Division that the language has diverged. So I guess this leaves me looking at ancient languages and secret languages, for the time being.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
A trade language is a great language to start out with! I only have vague ideas for the other languages of Sol thus far, the goal was to decide where the main language of the setting was from and begin to establish some of the wider implications of that. I find the politics and cultural impact of language is really fascinating. I am a bit surprise that you say the language hasn't evolved in 5800+ years, that's like... Well, to put it this way, 5300-6500 years ago in our world was when we invented the wheel, and language has evolved quite a lot since then. The boundary between like, what counts as a dialect and what counts as a different language is also really interesting. It's a lot less about linguistic variation and more about cultural politics. There's a quote I've heard "A language is a dialect with an army and navy". Of course like, our worlds don't have to be like our own, a big part of worldbuilding and storytelling is knowing where to simplify things. In a setting like Argentii which is all about being haunted by the past, you probably want that past to be speaking and writing in ways that are mostly comprehensible, that's totally valid.
I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the unifying language has evolved uniformly, sort of the same way that US English and UK English have done, but there is ALSO the unchanged root, sort of like how the Icelandic language has remained pretty consistent. Or maybe closer to the relationship between informal/formal Japanese. I'm super new to linguistics and it is a LOT more complicated than I thought.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
It's so complicated! I don't know a whole lot more than you, but I do know that one of your examples, Icelandic, was not naturally preserved, it is something they've actively been working towards. Icelandic is a pretty conservative and regulated language, I believe they have council that votes on new words, and have been actively working on making Icelandic alternatives to any foreign word that gets imported. We have a linguistic council here in Norway too, I don't know how widespread it is. I believe that the Icelandic language sounds pretty different to norse, and of course the vocabulary is different as it would be for any person today as compared to the ancient norse. It's fascinating stuff, but it's not stuff you necessarily need to bring into your own worldbuilding, just, you know, food for thought!
Not many citizens realize it, but the most powerful organization on the continent is the United Guild of Scribes, Calligraphers, Illuminators, and Engravers. This organization oversees all clerical (as in administrative clerks, not religious) and administrative positions, including...librarians and teachers. So, this is precisely relevant because that sort of linguistic control is precisely within their domain. They Who Keep The History, superlative and proper. And I think it's also reflected, either by design or accident, in the way that the Oxford English Dictionary catalogs English and why there's been so little deviation in 350 years of separation, and even for a few centuries before that because Elizabethan I English (Shakespeare) is in no way incomprehensible. We might not get the jokes, but that's a historical context problem, not a linguistics problem. Even, just off the top of my head, thinking back to like cookbooks from the court of Henry VIII, those are still wholly readable (depending on the grammar of the particular blogger, they're not really indistinguishable from now, LOL). Though, when you think about it, that could also be because of how fast the world was experiencing cross-cultural pollination. (Between the Spanish Navy, the VoC, and the Nantucket Whaling Industry, holy cow, Batman!!)
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
So many factors to consider and play around with! It's a really fun part of worldbuilding.
Secret time: I dipped into my #TreatYoSelf fund and got a lifetime subscription to Vulgarlang.com.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard