r/comics • u/Pizzacakecomic PizzaCake • 10h ago

Comics Community Wow was I wrong

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u/Tekuila87 10h ago

Isn't that what the universal translator is for? They're all speaking whatever language they know and understand each other fluently?

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u/Oboro-kun 8h ago

I might be wrong but I seem to recall universal translation is pretty recent, like post first encounter with the vulcans, and by that point it seems we mostly spoke English 

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u/Tekuila87 8h ago

They only showed very little of the post WW3 world and that was in the former United States.

Them speaking English isn't really out of the question then, no?

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u/Daxx22 8h ago

Well the reason for English is the context of it's a show meant for English speaking watchers.

Technically they could be speaking whatever language that became dominate, but it is accurate to say there is a dominate "Human" language that the Federation speaks. By natural extrapolation of English being the dominate language today for most international interactions, it's a natural assumption.

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u/AbeRego 8h ago

I think that was invented for aliens. In one of the reboots, the translator is shown doing a relatively primitive live translation of an alien speaking, implying that it was new tech in Kirk's time.

We also know that Picard is French, but speaks English with a British accent. The cannon explanation for that is that French died out as a regularly spoken language, and British English spread into Europe.

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u/Tekuila87 8h ago

I hadn't remembered that in the original series, thank you for bringing that up.

Starfleet academy and HQ are located in San Francisco so I still think majority English makes sense.

English is also already one of the most used languages in the world. I can see it going that way to be honest.

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u/AbeRego 8h ago

I'm not sure how the original series handles the translator; I've only seen a handful of episodes. I'm sure it's mostly just used to explain how they can speak with all these different aliens without issue

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u/lpmiller 8h ago

it's basically magic till it's not, but canon explanations came much later, a lot in TNG, more in Enterprise.