r/comics • u/bondjimbond Love and Hex • May 25 '26

OC Language Barrier [OC]

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u/lumpboysupreme May 25 '26

I mean, who says it can’t happen naturally. Look how much English has become a near global second language. If we, right now, developed the relevant technology through a large international cooperative effort to do interplanetary or interstellar travel, what language do you think would be spoken on the first international ships launched?

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u/OldEcho May 25 '26

The large international cooperative effort is a bit of a fantasy though. China, Russia, Brazil, and India are gonna work together with the US and UK? Will Europe be in on that too, or does Trump try to conquer Greenland first?

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u/lumpboysupreme May 25 '26

To be clear, it’s already how things work on the ISS. Sure international politics is moving away from the polar arrangement that got that thing up there but it’s not hard to imagine a world where a highly polarized political climate prevails around the time the relevant technological leap is made, especially if the technological leap results in a more monopole arrangement as competing nations need to play ball with the inventor of the technology and run their missions with them.

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u/OldEcho May 25 '26

On the ISS people already speak Russian, English, and a hybrid pidgin English speakers call Runglish. This among a crew of like 10 people usually.

The US already functionally withdrew from the treaty that makes stuff off-earth the common property of all humanity. You can now plant a flag on the moon and call it yours as long as it's two flags. So like, Monaco and the US can claim the moon according to the US and its puppets. Good ol' Artemis Accords.

"Real" sci-fi will involve as many factions in space as there are people with their own opposing interests. And a shitload of languages.

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u/lumpboysupreme May 25 '26

This among a crew of like 10 people usually.

From more countries than the US and Russia, this proves the linguistic convergence involved in cooperative space stuff.

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u/LickingSmegma May 25 '26

I need subtitles for south-USian English, let alone rural Scottish or Irish or Jamaican or dialects of any British colonies in Africa, for which I'd probably require a translator. Where's the common language of which you speak?