More than one Language?

Question:

Would a certain species of aliens, exclusive to one planet, all speak (either through verbal words or telepathy) the same language? Or would they have developed different dialects as we have on earth?

It's a controversial issue on how and why we have developed so many different dialects and lanquages throughout the ages. If it is true that we all came from the same starting point, why wouldn't the language developed at that point have carried on with us throughout mankinds history? According to the scriptures, it was God who caused our languages to alter, thus forcing man to spread throughout the earth...

Genesis 11:1 - And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

Genesis 11:6 - And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Genesis 11:7 - Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

Genesis 11:9 - Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Now, I'm not tring to turn this into a theology debate on mankinds history. Just to see what a species of beings on a seperate planet would have developed language into.

If the aliens have different languages, they may still have different nationalities and the members of one ship would be of one nation and tongue yet other ships from other nations of the same world may be sending ships with their own citizens and language. These aliens of the same world but of different nationalities may be in competition with each other to gain a foothold on this world.

However, it stands to reason, that upon colonizing other worlds, governments would become one more likely than not...so maybe they had many languages in the past, but now share a common one.

Either is possible really...

Or maybe they all have C3PO's that travel with them as translators.

Assuming greys are hostile I would think that they all speak the same language.
Using Earth as an example lets say a English speaking country was hostile and took over the world. In this they would murder most of the people that were different to them and would most likely make English the language of Earth. After adding thousands of years after that I would think there would be only one living language. There may be a few beings left who knew the languages of old but it would not be common.

Going by ourselves, logic dictates that technologically advanced aliens would use a single language (even if originating from several), as it is by far the simplest way to communicate globally.

Think on it. How many nationalities can we gather on this board? Yet are we not speaking one language?

If everyone started talking chinese, german, french, russian or possibly crap-english (aka internet american) to each other, this little "world" would collapse.

[edit on 10-2-2005 by merka]

Originally posted by merka
Going by ourselves, logic dictates that technologically advanced aliens would use a single language (even if originating from several), as it is by far the simplest way to communicate globally.

Think on it. How many nationalities can we gather on this board? Yet are we not speaking one language?

If everyone started talking chinese, german, french, russian or possibly crap-english (aka internet american) to each other, this little "world" would collapse.

[edit on 10-2-2005 by merka]

I agree. Barring any kind of divine intervention on behalf of these alien beings, I think it would be logical to say they would speak one lanquage for the sole reason that it makes more sense.

[edit on 10-2-2005 by mpeake]

Originally posted by mpeake
Question:
Would a certain species of aliens, exclusive to one planet, all speak (either through verbal words or telepathy) the same language? Or would they have developed different dialects as we have on earth?

OHboy! A linguistics question!

The answer is "you can't tell."
In some areas of the world, we have a "language of the nobility" and a "language of the peasants." They're the same basic language (German, for instance) but there are different words and rules for each. Uhm... think of English-As-Spoken-By-Shakespearian-Actors and "jive" (a form of English popular among Blacks at one time): www.cabcalloway.cc...

In some areas of the world you have a "men's language" and a "woman's language" and niether sex speaks nor understands the other's language. They communicate with a third patois.

Specialized groups develop specialized languages; thieves in London had their own "rhyming slang" that they used to discuss (rather openly) their doings.

It's a controversial issue on how and why we have developed so many different dialects and lanquages throughout the ages. If it is true that we all came from the same starting point, why wouldn't the language developed at that point have carried on with us throughout mankinds history?

Lots and lots of reasons. People hear things differently (with some folks, you can't tell if they're saying "pen" or "pin") and pronounce things differently. If you take people who speak one language and move them far away from that original group, they will over time develop different accents (the way Texans talk versus New Yorkers), and different words and concepts based on local environment. "Look, Martha! That yeti started an avalanche!" isn't very useful information (or plausible) in the middle of Texas... words like yeti and avalanche wouldn't have started.)

Wikipedia's always a good place to start:
en.wikipedia.org...

Good point...would an alien from Zeti-Reticuli 4 have a name for the "Marklar" on Zeti-Reticuli 3?

Alrughty then...I think that we can say easily that aliens have no problem speaking to and interpetting any and all of the spoken languages that we have today. We see this because of the MANY accounts of alien contact throught the ages by MANY various races, creeds, sects, religions, cultures, etc...Sure, no one really knows that those personal accounts are legit or not, but let's at least say this proves they have mastered all of our spoken words. Can we then say that there is a common theme in any and all of our spoken words that then aliens are evolved enough to pick up on and use to decipher the meanings? Or do we just fall back on the whole aliens only use telepathy thing? But, even if we did fall back on that, it may still not work. When you communicate in your own head, like thinking about saying something, you do so in you native language. So, even telepathy would need to be able to translate spoken (in the mind) words, right?

Man, I'm giving myself a headache

I would imagine that they have some sort on Universal translator and/or the use of telepathy with out language. It is really hard to say because all we can do is imagine how Aliens can communicate.

When you communicate in your own head, like thinking about saying something, you do so in you native language. So, even telepathy would need to be able to translate spoken (in the mind) words, right?

Not really, if you could transmit images, sounds, touch, taste, smells, etc. through telepathy, language might become obsolete. Why formulate the words to tell Marklar to hand you that hydrospanner, when you can simply send Marklar an image of him handing you the hydrospanner? Now how's your head doing?

Originally posted by Gazrok

When you communicate in your own head, like thinking about saying something, you do so in you native language. So, even telepathy would need to be able to translate spoken (in the mind) words, right?

Not really, if you could transmit images, sounds, touch, taste, smells, etc. through telepathy, language might become obsolete. Why formulate the words to tell Marklar to hand you that hydrospanner, when you can simply send Marklar an image of him handing you the hydrospanner? Now how's your head doing?

I know, I know...You could do that, and you probably do that on a regular basis, but not everytime. Somethings are more compliated that putting up a mental image to relay a message. For instance, if you wanted to tell Marklar to show you how to use that hydrospanner, you obviously couldn't send him an image of him using it and explaining to you how to use it, because you don't know what the image would look like.

Geez, I think I should just drop this while I'm behind

I don't know, wouldn't it be similar to watching a video of how to use a hydrospanner? Wouldn't that be way more instructional than trying to use words to explain it? Don't forget, all the other senses, even emotion, etc. could be transmitted.

Then again, during the early use of this, I bet there was a lot of misinterpretation due to daydreaming, etc. "What do you mean you wish you could strangle Marklar!!!???"

Originally posted by Gazrok

When you communicate in your own head, like thinking about saying something, you do so in you native language. So, even telepathy would need to be able to translate spoken (in the mind) words, right?

Not really, if you could transmit images, sounds, touch, taste, smells, etc. through telepathy, language might become obsolete. Why formulate the words to tell Marklar to hand you that hydrospanner, when you can simply send Marklar an image of him handing you the hydrospanner? Now how's your head doing?

But it still wouldnt be universal. The meaning of images, sounds, etc can have widely different meanings for different people. That is why we use "rough" translations in the spoken language...

What if Marklar interprets your giving image as a threat (give or else)?

IMO, If they have mastered space flight and are far ahead of us chances are they have put down differences and became one nation... We need to reach this pont the question is When?

Originally posted by merka
possibly crap-english (aka internet american)

'scuse me, but wot kind of crap-english (aka internet american) r u tolkin' 'bout?

It seems to me you love insulting your authorities and superiors!

Americans don't speak crap-english.

We perfected the english language!

[edit on 10/2/05 by Intelearthling]

Originally posted by Intelearthling
It seems to me you love insulting your authorities and superiors!

Which authority? Which superior?

Wait a minute... You're one of THEM, arent you!?!?!

[edit on 11-2-2005 by merka]

Not really, if you could transmit images, sounds, touch, taste, smells, etc. through telepathy, language might become obsolete. Why formulate the words to tell Marklar to hand you that hydrospanner, when you can simply send Marklar an image of him handing you the hydrospanner? Now how's your head doing?

agreed.

[linguist](no really)
It would really depend on a lot of factors. Probably the most important to the initial consideration would be how geologically isolating their home planet is.
Taking out questions of divine intervention, languages separate because of some form of isolation for the parent language. Usually this separation comes about from geological separation: There's a huge mountain range between the two cultures, or 3000 miles of ocean, or a hostile kingdom sets up shop between the two...something that prevents the flow of information between the two (or more) groups that start out speaking the same language. Aside from geography, things such as severly hierarchical social structures (In Japanese, for example, the grammar used by men and women was markedly different. While not two separate languages, it's possible that with continued separation it would have developed in that direction.) can cause a single language to become "dialected" and, eventually, to diverge into different languages.

Since we really have only the Earth to go off of for models of inhabitable-by-life-comprehendable-to-us, we can assume, for the moment, that any homeworld the aliens come from will be (or will have been at one time) geologically diverse. This makes it safe to assume that at least at one time the alien visitors had a number of languages.

At this point, we now need to look at what causes languages to come together: Ease of communication between the two language groups. Historically geography separated people, but it also brought them together. If two linguist groups found themselves in a fertile valley in the middle of an inhospitable mountain range, over time you would expect the two languages to begin to share features. In the modern world, this ease of communication is facilitated by the technology we use: radio, the Internet, television, movies, even books and magazines make it easy to share ideas the world over. Because of this, you find similar terms in more and more languages. Currently, those terms are in English as America has been the economic superpower in the Western world most recently. If current trends continue, though, I would imagine in 50 years or so we'll see an equal number of Chinese terms appearing in world languages. This usually happens in technical language (called "jargon") first, as technicians, scientists, and their ilk, dealing in concrete things, need to have simple, universal terms.

Assuming that the aliens' civilization followed a roughly similar course to ours, it's probably safe to say that, while it may not be the native language for each of the crewmembers, they do share a common language.

Now this analysis has a number of serious shortcomings: I've had to make a lot of assumptions based on human history and physiology. It could be that the hypothetical alien visitors are so different from us in terms of their social and physical development that all of the assumptions I've made are completely off-base. If they are telepaths with a planet-wide range, for example, divergence of language could not happen. If the are hive-like and extremely stratified, it's quite possible that there's a separate language for each type of work classifications (ie. engineers speak one language, pilots another, janitors a third, officers a fourth and so on), in this case there'd have to be some way of communicating between castes, but that could even be an additional caste whose job it is to function as an intermediary. This also assumes that the alien visitors will be biologically homogenous, or if not are at least capable of communicating in a mutually-intelligible form.
[/linguist]

Whew, that was a lot of posting for midnight

And now, Mirab, his sails unfurled.

[edit on 2/14/2005 by Whiskey Jack]