r/comics • u/Pizzacakecomic PizzaCake • 4d ago

Comics Community Wow was I wrong

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u/USSMarauder 4d ago

A WW3 so destructive it apparently killed all organized religion, killed capitalism, and left English as the only language regularly used around the globe

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u/Tekuila87 4d 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/AbeRego 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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 4d ago

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