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13 things to know about space + How will language change if humans travel the stars? - C C - Sep 6, 2020
The Moon is Rusting, and Researchers Want to Know Why
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2020/09/05/the-moon-is-rusting-and-researchers-want-to-know-why/
How Will Language Change if Humans Travel the Stars?
https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/interstellar-travel-language-change-linguistic-evolution.html
EXCERPTS: Real-life interstellar travel will be so slow that some weird linguistic things may happen before ships reach their destinations. [...] For one thing, language changes when people find themselves in new social situations, because they need new ways of describing their reality. ... Finally, people often intentionally change their language as a mark of distinction—a way to brand themselves one of us [the ships], not one of them [back on Earth]. ... Adopting new forms of language is a natural way to exhibit that. So, given that isolation and new social circumstances will change the colonists’ language, what kinds of changes might we expect? Some will no doubt be subtle.
Consider uptalk? The habit of ending every sentence with a rising pitch? Uptalk started among certain groups of Australians in the 1980s and soon went global. But while a space analogue to uptalk might strike Earthlings as strange, it wouldn’t hinder communication that much. The same goes for new vocabulary that the colonists develop on the journey, perhaps from jury-rigged technologies or new interstellar features they encountered. If these words were derivatives or portmanteaus of familiar words, context clues could illuminate the meaning.
Other changes would take more getting used to. In a recent paper titled “Language Development During Interstellar Travel,” linguists Andrew McKenzie and Jeffrey Punske point out that people 200 years ago commonly used constructions like “The road is currently building.” Today, that sounds ungrammatical and odd. We’d say “The road is being built” instead.
Pronunciation tends to shift over time as well, they note. Between about 1400 and 1600, the English language underwent what’s grandly called the Great Vowel Shift. Before the shift, the a in tame sounded like the a in father, and teem used to rhyme with our modern fame, among other differences. Then everything shifted, for reasons that remain unclear. It’s likely that only one or two vowels shifted at first, but several others then followed suit to make each one clearly distinguishable. In total, this cleaved English into barely intelligible camps of Before and After.
[...] All of this will be complicated by the fact that while the colonists are hurtling along and developing their new language, language on Earth won’t stand still either. Both the colonists’ language and the Earthlings’ language will be shifting simultaneously, so a 200-year mission effectively means 400 years of language change. Similarly, consider what would happen if Earthlings decide to send several waves of colonists to a single planet, on ships spaced a decade or two apart. Each ship’s language will evolve separately, and the later colonists could step out onto their new home planet having no idea what the prior inhabitants are saying.
So is there any way around these problems, or is space language doomed to deteriorate into a Babel? (MORE - details)
13 things you need to know about space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ecjxXa9B4w
INTRO: Here at ESA, the European Space Agency, space is our business. It’s a place we explore, heading outwards while also looking back, to improve life on our own blue planet. Why go out there? Because space is useful and valuable; because it’s the place we all live. That’s why ESA does what we do: because Earth is only the start. Here’s what you need to know about the stuff that surrounds us...