John Prigent wrote:I'd think it fairly obvious that the Honorverse uses English as a common language because RFC is writing in English. If he was French, German, Japanese or what-have-you then he'd be writing in that language - unless he chose to write in English for the simple reason that more people who are likely to read books for pleasure have English as a first or second language than any other language. Leave aside as irrelevant the question of how many speakers there are in any language, what counts are the numbers of potential readers for the story.
But it's equally certain that drift has occurred, and that other languages are in use. I await the passage when RFC has one of his characters experiencing what happened to me in an African country with probably dozens of closely-related tribal dialects plus English and Swahili as the official languages used in schools, commerce and government. The great joke enjoyed by the locals is to chatter at foreigners in Swahili (but they all love it when anyone tries to learn that language). So my wife and I were on safari and went back to the hotel after a morning's drive in the game park. We sat down in the bar for drinks, and a waiter came to us and asked in Swahili what we'd like, and had we had a good morning in the park. Without thinking abut it I answered in Swahili (yes, I knew a fair bit of the language in those days). He started to go off to get our drinks - and then came back looking stunned to check that I'd actually done that, he hadn't imagined it. His jaw actually dropped in astonishment, the first time I'd ever know that to really happen. (Oh, and we got marvellous service for the rest of the time we stayed there because all the waiters wanted to talk to me.) Contrast that with an American sitting in a different hotel bar where my wife was waiting for me to get back from a meeting. Yes, all the staff spoke good English. But he behaved as he would have at home in whichever part of the US was home, snapping his fingers and calling 'Boy' for service. Not a good idea, it was seen as insulting and he never got served at all. So it's not just a matter of having a common language, one also needs to be seen as polite according to local ideas; I think that might be a bigger stumbling block for mutual understanding.
Cheers
John
Here in South Africa the scenario you just described is tragically very commonplace. The impact of colonialism, European ideas on race and culture and institutionalized racism had deprived indigenous languages of status - I speak IsiXhosa quite well, but almost every time I address a black person in that language, they will insist on responding in either Afrikaans or English, which are the status-rich languages of the region. It's a travesty, because like all languages, the indigenous languages are incredibly beautiful and expressive, as well ass the vehicles of a huge reservoir of indigenous knowledge and wisdom.
