Tuesday 3 November 2020

Languages

Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER NINE.

English has become Angley in Europai and Ingliss in Stralia and Awaii whereas French has become Francey in the Domain of Skyholm and Faranasai in the Taiiti region.

Names of future languages differ not only between countries in the period of the Maurai Federation but also between alternative future histories. For example, Poul Anderson's Technic History has not only Anglic but also Fransai.

However, Anderson does not present any detailed knowledge of other languages like that given by Tolkien or by some Star Trek script writers and fans. Film adaptations of Anderson's works could present subtitled dialogues in future or alien languages which, however, would have to be invented for the purpose. In the case of the Ythrians, there are not only spoken words but also changeable feather displays.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I have wondered how different the Anglic of Dominic Flandry's time would be from our English. Stirling pointed out that would have to include changes in syntax/pronunciation as well as in spelling. I also imagined the Anglic of the Technic stories absorbing loan words from non-human languages. And English had definitely become Anglic by Nicholas van Rijn's time.

Ad astra!

S.M. Stirling said...

Francey and Fransai are both fairly close phonetic renderings of how "Française" is actually pronounced.

S.M. Stirling said...

French spelling is not phonetic, for the same reason English isn't -- it was regularized during a period of rapid linguistic change. That's why the spelling is full of final letters not pronounced anymore.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Another peculiarity is that France has an official gov't agency which attempts to decree which new words can be accepted as FRENCH, and to purge "undesirable" loan words from the language. Neither the UK or the US has anything like that!

Ad astra! Sean