I don't know if this has been addressed before and if it has I'm sorry for bringing it up again but I just need to know. I know that they have the universal translater on Star Trek to communicate with other species but it seems that on Stargate and Stargate Atlantis everywhere they go the beings they come in contact with all speak english. That was not the case in the original movie , so what gives ? This is the only hole I see in an otherwise good concept. Is english the universal language ? :confused: :confused: :confused:

You can get around the Stargate dooda by saying that English was invented by the Ancients who then brought it to Earth which then subsequently got spread throughout both galaxies. The freaky deaky gou'ald (Ancient Egyptian or whatever) could be the bug boys native language.

It all makes sense in my mind, trust me.

Dunno about the Stargate realm, but the Universal Translator for Star trek has always bugged me. What happens when they run into a new species, they have no record of their language, and they're face to face? The UT requires a lot of pre-work, like sharing linguistic databases, etc. The only time that I know of where this problem was even remotely touched on was the Next Generation episode 'Darmok and Galad' (sp?), where the Captain is stuck on this planet with this other guy. Great episode btw.

Apparently they got around this in one episode when they met a species that the Universal Translator didn't know. The ships computers analysed the speech patterns of the aliens and, after half an hour of the program's "day" it fed a sort of communication into the UT's.

I don't know if this has been addressed before and if it has I'm sorry for bringing it up again but I just need to know. I know that they have the universal translater on Star Trek to communicate with other species but it seems that on Stargate and Stargate Atlantis everywhere they go the beings they come in contact with all speak english. That was not the case in the original movie , so what gives ? This is the only hole I see in an otherwise good concept.

Is english the universal language ? :
it is, because
1) we let lazy screenwriters & novelists get away with it or
2) might also be the writers are having a hard enough time thinking out of the box, that to add one more strange element would be too much or
3) Hollywood, is writitng to an american audience, a notorious monolingual society, so what do you expect? or
4) you mean aliens don't speak english? or
5) its the lingua franca of Earth, so aliens learn it or
6) written for Americans, by americans, any others is a plus
7) would you be willing to sit through 2 hours (with or without subtitles) for Stargate II, in Aramaic?

Regarding Stargate, the writers acknowledged that issue with humor in the episode that featured the TV production of a Stargate-like program. Two of the members of the TV crew were arguing and one of them said, "All the aliens speak English, for god's sake!"

Regarding Star Trek, I was always troubled by the issue because the show took itself so seriously in other regards. I was relieved when they finally retro-invented the Universal Translator.

Of course it was a cloogy retrofit. Virtually every other major technological advance on Star Trek is a constant subject of conversation -- as if 21st century Americans would walk down the street having an animated discussion about how internal combustion engines work. But from the first episode of the original series until well into TNG, nobody ever talked about how translation was accomplished.

I prefer the translation microbes on Farscape. They get directly into people's brains, making it believable that they can decode a new language in a few seconds.

Think of the universal English on Stargate as just a convention required for TV. Similar to the fact that most aliens on most sci-fi shows have shapes similar enough to humans so that humans can fit into the costumes. You have to accept the limits of the medium. Otherwise you'll just have to limit your entertainment to the written word.

Of course all the aliens speak English, you are listening via the translator. If a Trekkie listens in Japan, the translator sends it out of their tv in japanese, or french or Czech or Italian or Mandarin, depending on where the listener is :bugeye: easy isn't it?

That doesn't explain why the Earth people in the program can understand the aliens in the program. Daniel Jackson probably understands Minoan, but I very much doubt that Jack O'Neill does.

What about Babylon 5? All the aliens had to learn english.

Regarding Stargate, the writers acknowledged that issue with humor in the episode that featured the TV production of a Stargate-like program. Two of the members of the TV crew were arguing and one of them said, "All the aliens speak English, for god's sake!"

Regarding Star Trek, I was always troubled by the issue because the show took itself so seriously in other regards. I was relieved when they finally retro-invented the Universal Translator.

Of course it was a cloogy retrofit. Virtually every other major technological advance on Star Trek is a constant subject of conversation -- as if 21st century Americans would walk down the street having an animated discussion about how internal combustion engines work. But from the first episode of the original series until well into TNG, nobody ever talked about how translation was accomplished.

I prefer the translation microbes on Farscape. They get directly into people's brains, making it believable that they can decode a new language in a few seconds.

Think of the universal English on Stargate as just a convention required for TV. Similar to the fact that most aliens on most sci-fi shows have shapes similar enough to humans so that humans can fit into the costumes. You have to accept the limits of the medium. Otherwise you'll just have to limit your entertainment to the written word.

Just up behind every person's left ear, there's a 1 cm-square part of the brain that deals with the processing of consonents in speech. You could attach some sort of m/chip to that area, and twiddle the nobs until you got the power to translate speech from any language/to any other language. That's how I explain the UT which I use in my short stories.

Its a bit like in children's stories with animal charcters - Beatrix Potter and all that - where the animals always understand each other and understand humans if they overhear us, but humans of course don't understand them. Sci-fi writers seem to have an unmentioned rule book for problems like that: you just do it such + such a way, try to avoid explaining if you can, and hope the audience just dont care.

>>What about Babylon 5? All the aliens had to learn english

More believeble, yes. There English was the language of commerce, simply because humans built babylon 5.

Regarding English being the universal language, I suppose it is (presently, at least) though I could ask what variety of English. In American English, for example, there are at least hundreds of words which came originally from any number of different languages; either American Indian, or more likely other European languages. Not only have these words been picked up in American English, but also they have subsequently taken on different meanings from those they held originally.

In the same way, hundreds of words have been picked up from the Maori language into the New Zealand English lexicon. To a lesser extent, this has happened with aboriginal words in the Australian variety of English. This happens with every language; modern Maori, for example, contains hundreds of English borrowings. Whenever a race encounters an object or idea for which they have no name, they tend to adopt the local word.

So what are we going to be faced with when we eventually get out there among the stars? Every race we meet with is going to have objects or ideas that we know nothing about, and vice versa. We'll end up picking up many of their words-- and vice versa. Eventually, we'll end up with varieties of English which are literally and figuratively so remote from the origin, Earth-bound language that it'll be dubious whether we could hold a conversation with them. We'd need UT's to talk to each other in what we both call English. After all, how many of us could hold an easy conversation with an English-speaker of the 11th or 14th Century AD?

After all, how many of us could hold an easy conversation with an English-speaker of the 11th or 14th Century AD?

People then would hav used middle English, like in Chaucer + Shakespere. 14th centurey, any way.. you could understand them and make them understand you, but it would sound v. funny and antique, and the accent would be strange. It would be fairly hard to get by at first, as with a German who's English is not too good.

People then would hav used middle English, like in Chaucer + Shakespere. 14th centurey, any way.. you could understand them and make them understand you, but it would sound v. funny and antique, and the accent would be strange. It would be fairly hard to get by at first, as with a German who's English is not too good.

I'd agree with you, Jenny, that the average educated person of the 11th or 14th Century could have held a conversation with me, given a bit of time. The problem would be more with talking to a peasant. Up until about 50 years ago, regional dialects were normal in Britain and elsewhere. The use of dialect-English amounted almost to the existence of other languages wherever you went in Britain. To some extent this is still true today, though the spread of universal education and more importantly the spread of radio and TV coverage has erased many of the words used in the dialects. I'm speaking for NZ alone, though I've no doubt it has happened elsewhere, for the same reason.

>>The use of dialect-English amounted almost to the existence of other languages wherever you went in Britain.

Thats how the different kinds of Chinese, which I hear ARE foreign languages to each other, must have come about, since there's been a definite Chinese country to spawn the dialects for much longer than theres been a Britain as such.

>>The use of dialect-English amounted almost to the existence of other languages wherever you went in Britain.

Thats how the different kinds of Chinese, which I hear ARE foreign languages to each other, must have come about, since there's been a definite Chinese country to spawn the dialects for much longer than theres been a Britain as such.

Good point; my parents were working for CORSO in China in the period 1946-50, and they told me about the difficulty that ordinary Chinese had to communicate with each other because even from province to province, the pronunciation of words was so different. Combined with that, there are four main languages in China--Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu and Hakka--along with scores of tribal and minority languages. A country of Babel... :)

Just up behind every person's left ear, there's a 1 cm-square part of the brain that deals with the processing of consonents in speech. You could attach some sort of m/chip to that area, and twiddle the nobs until you got the power to translate speech from any language/to any other language. That's how I explain the UT which I use in my short stories.I think you would still run into all sorts of problems with that. For example, how would the translator handle it if the other language has radically different grammar rules? If all of your tense modifiers and subject/verb arrangements work differently, you couldn't provide a 'real-time' translation as the alien was talking. You would have to wait for them to finishes speaking completely, then provide a paraphrased translation.

You would have to wait for them to finishes speaking completely, then provide a paraphrased translation.

Better than nothing! Maybe you could get enough to ask them to talk slow + carefully, like people in a new country usualy have to - if they do so, you would find it easier to learn more.

Could it be, could it be that english caters the the largest part of the target audience and the makes htem self speak english, amazing. Take say Japaness scifi, i have never seen that in english unless it had been dubbed, or how about chinese movies they, strangly, in chineces does that meke chinese the universal language?

Or how about chinese movies they, strangly, in chineces does that meke chinese the universal language?Um, if I understand you, I think you're referring to the fact that Chinese movies are subtitled in Chinese.

The reason for that is, as someone pointed out earlier in this thread and as I have posted about once a month some place on SciForums, in many cases the speech of different regions of China differ so much from each other that they really do satisfy the definition of "distinct languages": no intercomprehensibility, even with a bit of studying. Mandarin (originally the language of Beijing), Cantonese, Shanghai, Fuzhou -- a person who speaks one of those tongues simply cannot ever understand the others without studying them exhaustively as foreign languages.

But as much as the words have diverged in pronunciation, they still use the same words in the same sequence, about 99 percent of the time. So when they write the words, using a writing system that has changed uniformly, but not diverged, in thousands of years, they all write them the same way.

A movie may be produced with the actors speaking Mandarin. But if it's subtitled in the universal Chinese written language, any educated Chinese person from any part of the Chinese-speaking world can read it as if it were his native language -- because it is!

You misunderstod. I prefere to see Chinese movies i there original language, what even form that is, is really not importen to me since i would be reading the english subtitles. But they speak chinese so that most be the universal langiage.

What im getting at here, Is that there are hardly anyone that wants to learn new language just to see a movie. There for movies and such are made in the language of there creators or for the targeted audience, in America thats American.

Personly i dont care what language they speak, they could speak zulu for all i care, as long as there are subs, and its not dubbed. My point is english is not the universal language. its just whats easiest to use for the Americans, who like everybody else, use there native tongue.

I seem to remember there was some commotio when its was announced that "passion of christ" had subs, I wonder how the american public would react, if they where forced to read subs on a "daily" basis, for me(scandinavian) its 2nd nature.

edit:
why does it seem like i always get 2nd last or "first on page" posts, its so annoing :)

A movie may be produced with the actors speaking Mandarin. But if it's subtitled in the universal Chinese written language, any educated Chinese person from any part of the Chinese-speaking world can read it as if it were his native language -- because it is!

fascinating! So its as if french, Spanish, Itailan etc were all writen as English, even though theyre spoken v. diferent? I can hardly imagine that.

Perhaps theres a basic code built into human brains, a pattern of thinking like machine code in computers - something overlain by the 1st languages we learn. If it could be workd out + written somehow, there might be 1 written language for EVERYONE, howevr diferent their speech was.

Still wouldnt be a universal language though - alien brains must have a diferent structure.

why does it seem like i always get 2nd last or "first on page" posts, its so annoing

perhaps the server just likes your style? ;)

fascinating! So its as if French, Spanish, Itailan etc were all writen as English, even though theyre spoken v. diferent? I can hardly imagine that.No, there's not quite so much Zen to it. The languages of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Fuqian, Beijing, etc. all evolved from the same ancient Chinese tongue, just as French, Spanish and Italian all evolved from Latin. (But not English, it does not belong in your example! It is a Teutonic language, not Romance.) But because Chinese civilization never broke down and fragmented the way the Roman empire did, the written language remained in force continuously throughout their history and was the official written language of all the people.

This cohesive force kept the same words in the same sequence. The only change it could not prevent was phonetic, since Chinese writing is ideographic rather than even quasi-phonetic like the nightmare we call English. The words diverged mightily over the millenia in pronunciation since there was nothing to stop them. But the choice of words, the grammar and the syntax hardly changed at all.

"Hong Kong" is pronounced "Xiang Geng" in Mandarin. "Five" is "wu" in Mandarin and "ng" in Cantonese. But they are different pronunciations of the same words, you can trace their etymology back to the same words in ancient Chinese. (And in fact modern Cantonese is closer to the original pronunciation of ancient Chinese than Mandarin is.)

This is why linguists in earlier times called the various tongues of China dialects instead of languages. They had never encountered anything like this before and didn't know which way to rule on it. Today we say that Cantonese and Mandarin, to continue using the two most well-known tongues of China as examples, are distinct languages because there is no way a speaker of one can ever understand the other without studying it almost as hard as he would have to study English or Japanese. Whereas we say the speech of Sichuan province is merely a dialect of Mandarin because with only a little study one can mentally convert the sounds of one into the other almost by formula.

In fact, to a foreigner, Sichuan dialect does not sound as different from Mandarin as some of the outrageous dialects of British English sound from each other. With my modest knowledge of Mandarin and having friends from Sichuan whose pronunciation I was able to study, I can understand Sichuan dialect better that some of the dialects of rural England.

You speak some Mandarin? you must be a real superstudent, knowing so much about all these diferent subjects.

I see wht you mean about english dialects. How would an Oxford proffesor think of backwood Hillbilly talk..?!

Can I realy learn it at all from books, or do you think that speaking it with antives is the only useful way?

Can I really learn it at all from books, or do you think that speaking it with natives is the only useful way?I learned (a little) Portuguese from a book. It was a good book that explained the phonetics very well. I could hear the words in my head and I could pronounce them. But the first time I heard anyone actually speak the language, I couldn't understand most of it. And they thought my speech was both really funny-sounding and almost impossible to understand.

So the answer to your question depends on the language. One with very simple phonetics like Japanese or Hebrew, you could probably learn from a book and find out that you are pronouncing it correctly and you can understand people. A language with very complex phonetics, like English, would be impossible, worse than Portuguese.

How about spanish? - thats the realy important 2nd tounge to learn here.

You know how a lotof people joke that the world should all have just1 language to make things simpler? thatd be a real loss to culture Iknow. I'll bet mastering another language opens upa whole new dimnesion of songs + litrature?

Just be glad you don't have to deal with clicks or glottal stops.

like who does?

How about spanish? - thats the realy important 2nd tounge to learn here.You have the advantage that Spanish speakers are some of the most patient people on earth with foreigners struggling to speak their language. So you'll be understood. But the problem is that Spanish words are relatively long compared to English or Chinese, so in order to keep the data transmission rate high, Spanish is normally spoken much faster than our languages. You have to be able to identify the phonemes and parse the syllables into words in double-time. Most Americans have a lot of trouble with that. I've been blundering my way through Spanish for almost 50 years with a lot of native speakers to help me, and I still often get lost in a sentence because they get five or six words ahead of my comprehension. If you're specifically worried about the pronunciation, I'd have to say that yes, that would be a really big problem with learning Spanish from a book. I can think of six phonemes off the top of my head that are much different from their English counterparts. Most American students of the language have a lot of difficulty with them even in a class that concentrates on the spoken language. If you learn it from a book you probably will have a lot of trouble recognizing them and distinguishing them from each other when you hear them. These days it's so easy to find native speakers of Spanish just about anywhere in the U.S. If you want to study from a book, at least do yourself the favor of finding someone to practice with informally.You know how a lotof people joke that the world should all have just1 language to make things simpler? thatd be a real loss to culture Iknow.I'm glad you get that, a lot of Americans don't. Language shapes thought and deep thoughts don't translate accurately.I'll bet mastering another language opens up a whole new dimension of songs + literature?The key word is "master." Literature and song lyrics are exceedingly difficult to understand specifically because they tend to use words that don't come up often in informal speech. I can't read a Spanish novel without a dictionary next to it, and it's such slow going that it ruins the experience. Songs aren't quite so bad, there are certain words and grammatical constructions that are used more in music than in speech and once you learn them you're over the hurdle. For example, it's a myth that people don't use the personal pronouns because the conjugation of the verb includes the person. No one says "Te amo" instead of "Yo te amo." But they do it all the time in songs because sometimes they just need an easy way to lose a syllable for the meter.

No, there's not quite so much Zen to it. The languages of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Fuqian, Beijing, etc. all evolved from the same ancient Chinese tongue, just as French, Spanish and Italian all evolved from Latin. (But not English, it does not belong in your example! It is a Teutonic language, not Romance.) But because Chinese civilization never broke down and fragmented the way the Roman empire did, the written language remained in force continuously throughout their history and was the official written language of all the people.

This cohesive force kept the same words in the same sequence. The only change it could not prevent was phonetic, since Chinese writing is ideographic rather than even quasi-phonetic like the nightmare we call English. The words diverged mightily over the millenia in pronunciation since there was nothing to stop them. But the choice of words, the grammar and the syntax hardly changed at all.

"Hong Kong" is pronounced "Xiang Geng" in Mandarin. "Five" is "wu" in Mandarin and "ng" in Cantonese. But they are different pronunciations of the same words, you can trace their etymology back to the same words in ancient Chinese. (And in fact modern Cantonese is closer to the original pronunciation of ancient Chinese than Mandarin is.)

This is why linguists in earlier times called the various tongues of China dialects instead of languages. They had never encountered anything like this before and didn't know which way to rule on it. Today we say that Cantonese and Mandarin, to continue using the two most well-known tongues of China as examples, are distinct languages because there is no way a speaker of one can ever understand the other without studying it almost as hard as he would have to study English or Japanese. Whereas we say the speech of Sichuan province is merely a dialect of Mandarin because with only a little study one can mentally convert the sounds of one into the other almost by formula.

In fact, to a foreigner, Sichuan dialect does not sound as different from Mandarin as some of the outrageous dialects of British English sound from each other. With my modest knowledge of Mandarin and having friends from Sichuan whose pronunciation I was able to study, I can understand Sichuan dialect better that some of the dialects of rural England.


Finally, someone who actually knows what he is talking about.

You have the advantage that Spanish speakers are some of the most patient people on earth with foreigners struggling to speak their language..

Perhaps its part of the culture to have a bit of patience? I could deal with someone who struggled to understnd me, but it could be frustratin if they didnt improve after a while.

I've been blundering my way through Spanish for almost 50 years with a lot of native speakers to help me,

so did you start with only english like most of us ignornt Yanks? If youre in your 50s or 60s Frag, maybe I've stil got time to be as knowlegable as you by that age...

may be in this world sweet heart although i have met people fomr other planets and they say there is alot more than english spoken in the univeres.
Here is a picture of me and the alien (http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3814&stc=1)

Perhaps its part of the culture to have a bit of patience? I could deal with someone who struggled to understnd me, but it could be frustratin if they didnt improve after a while.I can't say for sure about the people of Spain because I haven't spent much time among them. But I'd say you're right about the patience thing in the New World. Just look at the governments they put up with for decades. Mexico was under the thumb of the PRI for about as long as the Russians were stuck with the Communist Party, and they complained considerably less about it.so did you start with only english like most of us ignornt Yanks? If youre in your 50s or 60s Frag, maybe I've stil got time to be as knowlegable as you by that age...Yes, I was monolingual. But I had a couple of advantages. One was that my mother's native language was Bohemian -- or Czech as we (try to) say today. She wouldn't teach it to me because in those days they thought growing up bilingual would make you a retarded gay atheist or something like that, but just growing up with the sounds of another language around me made it a bit easier to wrap my tongue around some -- even from yet a third language -- when the time came. And the second was that the time came very early. In Arizona in those days Spanish was a required course in the eighth grade. Our vocal apparatus was still flexible enough to master the sounds and we still had enough blank synapses waiting for duty to master the thought patterns. And the grammar, the insufferable grammar! I believe the only major language on this planet with a less troublesome grammar than English is Chinese. Spanish grammar has so many absolutely unnecessary paradigms to memorize, I wonder how many brain cells it takes just to conjugate one verb. And don't get me started on Bohemian.

I'm on the cusp, 61.

may be in this world sweet heart although i have met people fomr other planets and they say there is alot more than english spoken in the univeres.
Here is a picture of me and the alien (http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3814&stc=1)

Oh Roger... :( i thought you were such a sensible french romantic, all down to earth + sophisticted.. UFO nuts dont qalify as that, sorry.

Cute picture, I supose its done with old windows Paint?

Spanish grammar has so many absolutely unnecessary paradigms to memorize, I wonder how many brain cells it takes just to conjugate one verb. And don't get me started on Bohemian.

From that view point, it'd be beter if English still had a complex se t of verb endings just like French - so we'd find it easier relating to the verbs in other languags when we try to lern them at high school.

if Bohemain is worse for grammer, do the nouns all conjugate as wel?

For example, it's a myth that people don't use the personal pronouns because the conjugation of the verb includes the person. No one says "Te amo" instead of "Yo te amo."

Uh... that isn't a myth. At least in Spain. Nobody here says "Yo te amo" instead of "Te amo". In fact, they are much more likely to say "Te quiero" instead of "Te amo". :p

Back to the original topic: Has anyone noticed that all extinct races seem to speak other languages that Daniel Jackson has to translate, while all surviving races speak english. Apparently, speaking English serves as some sort of protection from the Goulds!