Languages - Parlo Italiano - What langauge should be the Official?

Runnerbrax · 2003-08-08 08:26:36

Latin

Spider-Man · 2003-08-30 21:38:21

I'm so delighted to read such an intriguing topic, mixing my two first loves, space and language... ? molto bello che parliamo dell'italiano, la mia lingua favorita.

My picture of intraplanetary heaven would be for Earth to have English as its official language (which is virtually already is), and Italian for Mars. There could be nothing more appropriate and beautiful, the two inhabited planets of our solar system with the two most poetic and lyrical languages...the very music of the celestial spheres.

If I may quote myself from another topic:

Actually, the "best" language for communication, on Mars or Earth, would doubtlessly be English ? and I don't say this from an Anglocentric point of view, but a linguistic and lyrical one. English is the most poetic of languages, in part due to the classicism of its aesthetic sound, but mainly due to its awesome power of description. There are more words in our lexicon than any other language; the second largest lexicon is Russian, which has no more than a quarter of the words as in English; and then French is in third, with only a sixteenth the vocabulary as we have. There is also tremendous variety in English, stemming from a rich cultural linguistic history that grows from traditions of nearly every language and nation in the world. As a sampling of so very much, and having a power to describe like no other, English is doubtlessly the best language to carry the flag of Earth to Mars, and beyond.

And I stand by those remarks. Nevertheless, I think the absolute best scenario would be Italian for Mars, English for Earth.

As for French, I couldn't begin to see the purpose. English perfect French and has absorbed all the goodness into itself, leaving all the bad parts back in Normandy from whence it came. As for Esperanto, please, can't we do better than invent a lousy, unattractive, radical "language"? We have enough languages on Earth already without fudging something so unpleasant.

Also, not to contradict our italophilic thread-starter Kasei, for I commend is admirable choice (and I am Italian by descent), English does not have irregular grammar or nonfunctional rules or any inconsistencies except for that the pronunciation of words. If sound is left completely out of English words, and is hypothetically only a written language, then it makes perfect sense. The problem with the 'breaching of rules' is that arbitrary, inane, stupid rules are applied to English when they do not belong there, when other grammatical consistencies are in place that don't need childlike, simplistic explanations.

Quoting Cindy:

Ah, Monsieur, Fran?ais est la langue de mon Voltaire aim?. Comment n'appr?ciez-vous pas le fran?ais? C'est ?galement la langue de roman. Je vote pour le Fran?ais, oui.

Ah, s?, madamina, francese ? una lingua dal Latino, ma l'italiano ? pi? romano del francese. Ed il francese non ha la belt? dell'itaniano.
Anche penso che hai un nome pi? bello; ho avuto un'amica si chiama "Cindy".

Quoting Cobra:

Besides, I like a language in which I can sound threatening if I choose. French makes it really hard...

*Laughs outloud.* Then try German; it's a great language for many things, especially speaking loudly and commandingly.

Surferosad · 2003-09-01 14:19:28

Colonies could adopt any language they want, but Mars needs a lingua franca. I vote for something dead and inoffensive: revive Greek or Latin the same way Israel revived Hebrew! It's the only way of giving the impression that we're starting anew, and to get rid of all the silly nationalistic and cultural fighting that the adoption of any living language will entail.

Hell, I'd rather have Esperanto than any other living language!

Josh Cryer · 2003-09-01 15:23:20

Spider, you seem well in to linguistics, what do you think of lojban?

If we're going to truely start anew, how about the most recently designed practical language?

Palomar · 2003-09-01 16:36:14

Ah, s?, madamina, francese ? una lingua dal Latino, ma l'italiano ? pi? romano del francese. Ed il francese non ha la belt? dell'itaniano.
Anche penso che hai un nome pi? bello; ho avuto un'amica si chiama "Cindy".

*Mes excuses au dickbill, si j'ai une erreur. Merci, Araign?e-Homme. J'apprends le fran?ais. Je sais fran?ais; Italien, non. Merci du compliment concernant mon nom. Bonne journ?e ? vous. Je suis heureux que vous soyez au panneau de message.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2003-09-01 16:38:52

*My thoughts (sorry if I sound like a party-pooper):

If the Russians get to Mars first, and settle it, they will speak Russian (or whatever *they* call their language).

If the Germans get to Mars first, and settle it, they will speak German (or whatever *they* call their language). And so on, and so forth.

Whoever the first settlers are, from whichever nation they hail, they are going to have enough hardships to tackle and things to do on an everyday survival basis than trying to communicate with one another in a non-native -- and hence secondary -- language!

Communication is one of the keys to any endeavor; miscommunication has to be kept as minimal as possible. Thus, IMO, any group of people from anywhere on the globe will be best served by communicating to each other in their native tongue (whatever language that may be) -- at any time, in any circumstance and particularly on another planet, i.e. Mars!

It's ludicrous to expect German settlers on Mars and their mission control staff on Earth to all learn Portugese in order to communicate: Why not just speak German?!

I'm just a practical gal. ::shrugs::

--Cindy

Spider-Man · 2003-09-02 01:21:47

Mes excuses au dickbill, si j'ai une erreur. Merci, Araign?e-Homme. J'apprends le fran?ais. Je sais fran?ais; Italien, non. Merci du compliment concernant mon nom. Bonne journ?e ? vous. Je suis heureux que vous soyez au panneau de message.

Il vostro francese ? molto bello, madamina. Ed anch'io mi lieto a stare qui al questo foro del discussione.
Hm, e penso forse che mi prefero "Araignnaire" nel francese, o "Raniere" nell'italiano.

As much as I'd adore Italian on Mars, Surferosad, I think you're right; Latin should be the language of Mars. The fact that all its features and topography are named in Latin is physical reason enough, to say nothing of all the other Roman allusions.

And I think Lojban is very interesting, Josh; I looked into it once you mentioned it. I might take to learning it, once I master some other spoken languages; but one thing that bothers me is the borrowing of root words from so many sundry languages. It doesn't seem to mesh, and only adds to confusion. More than that, there is a severe lack of continuity in the pluralizations and other word endings. It think Italian has every other language beat, including Latin and German, in this area with its logic and unity, its simplicity and beauty.

Josh Cryer · 2003-09-02 07:53:53

Spider,

Hehe, Mars has many features named after towns and people in the US and around the world, almost in a random fasion. It's kind of funny to look at some spots on Mars named from gemstones to small hick towns in Texas.

Also, the developers of lojban intentionally took a splotch of every major language to create their lexicon so that it would be almost as random as possible, yet still have some personal ties to the worlds languages. They probably could've use a random number generator of sorts and came up with a similar lexicon. I think that was good of them, few of the words are similar to other real words, so it makes lojban unique. The only problem is that you have to learn some 1300 cmavo (SHmavO), which are predicate words with a lot of placements to remember. It's quite frustrating. I've only learnt a few dozen.

I think concepts like masculinity and femininity are difficult for me to understand (I'm not even sure if English has such things). lojban has no such distinction. Plus I'm a sucker for simplicity.

Spider-Man · 2003-09-02 08:15:33

Actually, English does still have gender, with the same complexity as German. We just use the same articles (the, a, an) and pronouns (it) in every instance so that they are completely disguised. Still, gender is there, especially in more archaic (and potentially beautiful) forms of speech, like "she's a fine ship", "tell the dog to lie himself down", "the cat, make her come over here", etcetera, as Irish accents are known to have.

Also, Lojban has a very clear German bias to its phonetic base, which disheartens me; it should have used a Romance language instead.

Josh Cryer · 2003-09-02 09:07:54

For what it's worth, using a text to speech translator, a combonation of Italian, Spanish and English provided teh best results. Personally, hearing lojban and speaking, I can't see any distinct language similarities. It's like a totally arbitrary thing to me.

Surferosad · 2003-09-02 09:20:37

While the idea of reviving latin pleases me, there's one thing that bothers me: it's too, well, western... I wish we could know what a chinese speker or an Indian would think of this! Nevertheless, barring the use of living languages and all the problems that would bring, or the invention of a new language, I can't think of any alternative to latin (with the possible exception of greek).

Spider-Man · 2003-09-03 15:03:22

If the Western influence that you believe Latin has (dead as it is) is too controversial, then I think you should have all the Latin features of Mars renamed to be nothing but numbers ? cold, rigid, infallible numbers ? based on their latitude, longitude, and elevation.

Of course, that still leaves the possibly dreadful connotion of the name "Mars" itself, a clear Occidentocentric, chauvinist appellation meant to demean non-Western people. We would need to call it something completely flavorless and simple, like "The Red One".

But we couldn't write it in the Roman alphabet, of course; we would have to use an invented alphabet, or better yet, just numbers in place of the letters. But we couldn't have it in English like that, no, we'd have to represent it by something non-Western, like a series of numbers to symbolize it based on the wavelength frequency of reddish light. But we couldn't use Arabic numerals, of course, and certainly not Roman numerals! godforbid. Something binary ought to do.
We have to make sure that no one is offended.

And then we'd have to go on renaming the rest of the planets, especially the mocking Moon, and all their features; and then we'd have to do the stars, all the thousands and thousands of stars, and then the galaxies...!

I could go on like this, but being sarcastic is tiring, and I don't like it.

Byron · 2003-09-03 15:17:56

*My thoughts (sorry if I sound like a party-pooper):
If the Russians get to Mars first, and settle it, they will speak Russian (or whatever *they* call their language).
If the Germans get to Mars first, and settle it, they will speak German (or whatever *they* call their language). And so on, and so forth.
Whoever the first settlers are, from whichever nation they hail, they are going to have enough hardships to tackle and things to do on an everyday survival basis than trying to communicate with one another in a non-native -- and hence secondary -- language!
Communication is one of the keys to any endeavor; miscommunication has to be kept as minimal as possible. Thus, IMO, any group of people from anywhere on the globe will be best served by communicating to each other in their native tongue (whatever language that may be) -- at any time, in any circumstance and particularly on another planet, i.e. Mars!
It's ludicrous to expect German settlers on Mars and their mission control staff on Earth to all learn Portugese in order to communicate: Why not just speak German?!
I'm just a practical gal. ::shrugs::
--Cindy

Cindy, I agree with you 100% on this one

Whoever gets there first gets to speak their own language, plain and simple.

The idea of using Latin, Lobjam, Esperanto, or any other "common" language goes out on a limb pretty far, imho...considering that we can't even agree on something as simple as a Martian calender. (!) (Some of you might remember that particular debate...lolol. )

But if an Esperanto or Latin-speaking community gets to Mars first and spread their wings across the planet, then more power to them...

B

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2004-03-12 06:37:15

Esperanto? What was the one Europeans made up..was it that Esperanto..a combo and mix-mash of many languages such as french, german , italian...sounds good but would it work?

but who knows, it depends on what type of trade mars has, who works on the planet, what people move there in the future Mars might start speaking Spanish, Chinese, Russian or Arabic? Communication and education will be important for the future of mars, maybe we should send bi-lingual on missions.

JammerG55 · 2004-03-20 15:17:49

No currency will work on mars untill there is a fairly large population on mars. untill then we will have to resourt to bartering

JammerG55 · 2004-04-28 12:57:59

No currency will work on mars untill there is a fairly large population on mars. untill then we will have to resourt to bartering.

Here Here. but why don't we just stick to plain old english most countries already require english to be tought in there schools in addition to there own language. :bars3:

Earthfirst · 2004-04-30 22:33:32

Engles only! no foreigers allowed, they toke are jobs!
Dane goo backs. "Stan marsh"
Back to the pile! were going back to pile? sweet me and mr. slave are ready to go. South park rencent show about futor emigrants coming form back in time to get work.
Lemmwincks no!

Josh Cryer · 2004-05-01 07:11:10

That episode was hilarious.

RobS · 2004-05-01 09:38:13

Lojban; how interesting, I had never heard of it before. I've studied Esperanto and it at least has the advantage of a few hundred thousand speakers and severan tens of thousands of books translated into it. I love this translation of "Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night":

Tigro, tigro, brile brula
En arbaro nokt-obskura

By the way, the classic albedo features on Mars are named in Greek, not Latin; the test example is "Hellas," Greek for "Greece." The Latin is "Graecia" I suppose.

-- RobS

smurf975 · 2004-06-03 12:49:51

I think we should all just talk in binary.

clark · 2004-06-03 13:02:07

1100101110000100101001010101010001001000101001.

And then he said, "001011010001010".

That was the funniest thing I ever heard from a clown.

smurf975 · 2004-06-03 14:31:17

1100101110000100101001010101010001001000101001.
And then he said, "001011010001010".
That was the funniest thing I ever heard from a clown.

And also to allow to more complex expressions I suggest we add the following: AND NOT OR XOR INVERTED. ( I mean the logic not the words or else jsut stick to english)

Josh Cryer · 2004-06-15 07:12:37

I have decided, http://www.tokipona.org/]toki pona will be the official language of Mars. (Especially in light of the free chat thread illustrating how crazy everyone here is, hehehe.)

clark · 2004-06-15 09:25:05

I have decided, toki pona will be the official language of Mars.

ike a.

atitarev · 2004-06-15 17:30:13

I was just curious what people thought should be the Official Language on Mars. If the, no offence, Americans get there way we'll all be speaking English. But English is a very poor language with very little structure.
So shouldn't Mars have the perfect language? I say Yes.
And the language I came up with is Italian. Italian is simple to learn for most people in the G7 nations. Also it has a good few grammar rules, not to may though, and are kept to 99% of the time, unlike English. Also it is the closest modern Language to Latin, which most Martian Nomenculture is in. But the reason Latin would not be suitable would be it is missing to many words needed in the modern World. Correct?
Tell me what you think? Is there another language you think is Best (more perfect so please no one who says everyone should speak English, cause most already do....loads speak Spanish and that is just as bad as English).
btw I am not Italian.
Also, Italian is only spoken by 80 million people so it will put (more-or-less) everyone in the same boat - everyone will be on level pegging, no one will have language advantage in either way;
a) by not having to learn a language
b) or by having a second, private language.
Everyone will have a new language and an old.
This would be best right?
Also, anyone know any Italian Names for Martian Nomenculture...I am curious.]
???

I am Russian but I don't have any problem if the official language becomes English. The language is the natural choice; no one should impose, which language to speak. On Earth English is used in many cases as the lingua franca even between non-English speaking countries or organizations. If some other language becomes dominant on Mars it will become the language of communication and the official language.

In the European Union they've got a bit of a problem with so many different languages used in each country, so many translators required and the combinations, so they use interpreters/translators for other languages. So, for instance, you need to translate from Maltese into Slovenian but there are no translators handy - they will use a Maltese/German and a German/Maltese to work around the problem. It creates a logistical nightmare - because each country is respected and representatives from each country should receive documents and verbal translations in their own language. But these are official people. In Australia, like in other immigrants' countries for example, there are a translated booklets for different services to help people to understand better if they don't know English but because the majority speaks English we immigrants adjust and speak this language too. English is more the language of the common use rather than official, although it is official too.

I believe it's not important at this stage to fantasize and decide which language should be used on Mars if there are no people on Mars. If Americans come and settle first - it's going to be English, if the Japanese come and settle first - it's going to be Japanese. If we get mixtures - let the Martians decide what they prefer to use.

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Re: Languages - Parlo Italiano - What langauge should be the Official?

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