Of course the choice of language is neccesary for a story, but I need to try to determine what is the most advanced. I guess what I mean is which language offers the most in expressing ideas, or shall I say if there were a genetically enhanced human and it were the most inteligent being ever, what would it choose?
My immediate guess is Latin, but, I am in no way a language expert or even close.
Mathematics have also been used in scifi because it is often perceived as being truly universal. However, I think only cerain ideas could be expressed that way.
Saying a language is more advanced is a touchy subject. Language is a strong indication of culture and therefore, you're implying that one culture is more advanced. I'm only adocating English because of the size of the vocabulary.
And English has officially (and I say permanently) become a world requirement. It is the language our very electronic infrastructure is written in. URL addresses, http protocols, C++ languages are all written in English. There's no German Java applets or Japanese HTML code. All programs in the world are in English.
German I think has a way of creating words by concatenating words into one to create a specific description - but the words ended up being huge.
I have heard Sanskrit had a 'scientific' grammar about it's language construction - but I have no idea what that means.
I have always considered that an advanced language allowed you to express your ideas specifically and *exactly* with an economy of words. Even English can't do that - in science we use the word 'force' but have to give it a scientific definition because English is not advanced enough where merely saying "force" conveys the exact meaning simply by stating it.
Perhaps you don't need to literally invent a highly advanced language, but convey how your characters might react to one - by having the perfection of the language manifest itself in the story in terms of preciseness and multifacetedness (real word?) of the idea expressed.
You got your work cut out for ya.
If you have to have something specific you could invent your own language - might take some time, but with specific goals for the kind of language you want - an hour of research a day will give tools for a life time
here are some links:
http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
If all else fails - there's always IgPay AtinLay.
[This message has been edited by billawaboy (edited March 19, 2010).]
Either way, I'd try to get my hands on an old text book. I have several and that made it so much easier to remember what I'd learned in school since it's been a while. Good luck!
Similarly, Latin is said to be the language of scholarship...similar frame of time...
I believe about half of my class failed - it is very challenging.
It has been over 20 years since I took Greek, but I still have all of my various lexicons and dictionaries. I can no longer read it without having about three other books open to decode it. It is NOT like riding a bike.
Why not have the dude speak in whatever the native language the person he is speaking to uses. Then they wouldn't have to find a translator, and I think you could show his intelligence by the amount of languages he speaks.
That's what I say you go with.
~Sheena
WHO WON THE WAR.
Consider Chinese. they are advancing dramatically in technological capabilities, life style, influence in the world, financially (they own something like half the US debt). They have a culture thousands of years old yet are becoming new again. they have a very advanced spoken language and their written language requires a typewriter with some thousand keys if I remember right.
it would be a language an advanced version of us would love, as their language is so expansive. It is expansive differently than English, which will even change the meaning of a word, or at least the usage of a word, to fit their needs.
Chinese is an elegant language for poetry which does not translate well into English.
I use American English as the standard (American measurements also) I always worked that they were the ones who would reach the stars. Also that is the only language I speak.
To have your higher beings speak a different language, Chinese would be a great alternative. It requires more training to fully read all the symbols of the Chinese language compared to the English with 26 letters. that would be something that a higher intellect creature would find pleasure in.
What you are looking for depends on what you are after. Different languages are strong in different areas.
As others have said English has the greatest vocabulary, but because it got that way by absorbing other languages, it doesn't follow its own grammatical and spelling rules. (Like having 2-3 hundred commonly used irregular verbs!)It can be very hard to learn if one doesn't already speak a related language like German or the Romance group.
Languages that developed in isolation tend to be more obedient of their own structure/rules. Japanese and German are the msot obedient to their won grammar supposedly. Can't speak for German but 'watshi wa nihongo o hanasemasu kara' I'll tell you about Japanese.
Japanese has only 3 irregular verbs and is spelled phonetically. It uses 4 alphabets and has a marvelously complex system of expressing social/hierarchical relationships. It is highly contextual, however and it can be difficult to follow a full conversation unless you are very close to fluent because if the speakers' understand the topic of the conversation, the inclusion of subjects in the sentence structure are optional.
Phonetic alphabets usually developed after pictograms (pictures). Modern computers work better with phonetic alphabets as pictogram ones like Chinese and some Japanese characters have to be input by IME. Fortunately Japanese has 3 phonetic and only one pictogram alphabet to choose from. Chinese has only pictograms and must be entered by selecting the radicals (parts) of the kanji characters. Its basically a question of lanaguge bumping against the logistics neccesary to make a keyboard (easy for a phonetic alphabet of 24-40 character, but impossible for the 10,000 kanji needed to write Chinese).
I must have dreamed about a presentation on language (I've attended a few conferences lately, and there might have been something, but I can't recall what and where, hence the dream possibility), but my vague recollection was that the language used some kind of clever way to express a huge range of things by combining a few simple elements (like brush strokes in kanji?).
Wish I could remember if I really attended such a presentation and didn't just dream it.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited March 20, 2010).]
And this is getting off topic. Sorry, Bent Tree.
Nintendo DS with the stylus has a Japanese learning program/dictionary where you enter the kanji and it tries to read it and give you the meaning.
The opposite end of the spectrum in that sense would be a language like French, where there is an entire national academy devoted to the purity of the language. For instance, they were not happy when they realized people were starting to call all those new-fangled miracle boxes "le computer" because it contributed further to a sort of English intrusion on the language. Hence the birth of the word "l'ordinateur," which (from what I understand) has become the dominant word today. They lost the battle on "le week-end" though.
If English is in any way more "advanced" or expressive, it's because (IMHO) it's a dirty, dirty whore of a language, and I love it.
That may be an argument against using English, though, since the same phrase can mean so many different things, and no rule of grammar or spelling is complete without a few thousand exceptions.
quote:
Another good argument for English - it's something of a whore, and I mean that in the nicest possible way
True dat. Name practically any language on Earth or off, and you can usually find some words from it in English.
Quoting from the site:
quote:
Vizka la Spat. (See Spot.)
(Command) See the-one-named Spot!Vizka lepo la Spat, prano. (See Spot run.)
(Command) See the-event-of the-one-named Spot, running!Prano, hoi Spat. I prano. (Run, Spot. Run!)
(Command) Run, O Spot! (And) Run!
[This message has been edited by micmcd (edited March 22, 2010).]
I've also heard it described as a "polyglot" instead of a language (meaning that it is too jumbled up and full of words from other languages to qualify as its own language--it's a multi-language--a "polyglot").
Perhaps I lack a certain sense of elegance...
Arabic, at least Modern Standard Arabic, is ridiculously logical. In practice, everyone speaks one dialect or other that (in my opinion) is the child of Arabic and whatever folks used to speak before Arabic arrived. Every Arabic dialect claims to be closest to "true" Arabic.
Vocabulary is generated in arabic from roots that can be inflected as verbs, nouns, and adjectives. So they use the same root for school, learn, and study and another for write, book, library.
And maybe they will win the war. Not saying they should, but they could. However, if you go with Arabic you are going head to head with Dune so you better be able to write better than the devil himself.
P.S. Though Star Trek has used enough Arabic that it may not be the sole province of Dune anymore.
[This message has been edited by Tricia V (edited March 26, 2010).]
If your alien is learning a language, he (it) wouldn't view it as English, Chinese, etc... They'd probably be trying to learn "Human." They may be so advanced it hasn't even occurred to them that there are different languages, and so your alien would speak them all, using whatever vocabulary and grammar system works best to express the idea. Only later does the alien learn that not all humans speak that way. It would be sort of a case of so-intelligent-as-to-miss-the-obvious.