Languages

There is no definitive count of the number of languages used within the Empire, but human languages alone likely number in the millions. Most of these by far are limited to single planets, while a few are used by interstellar factions and groupings. Very few have any claim to be real common tongues of humanity. Of the few that do, the most significant are the Trade Speech spoken by Spacers, and the artificial language Balo, used within the court for official decrees and correspondence. In general, interstellar commerce and diplomacy takes place in a chaotic muddle of different languages, and there is no single language any one person can learn which is likely to be of very broad use.

General language patterns and origins

To the best of our knowledge, all natural human languages have evolved from some language spoken on Earth. During the long period of the Human Federation and Great War, more than ninety-five percent of humans never met anyone from another planet. In this atmosphere of severe isolation, the settlers adapted their birth languages to suit new conditions and environments, gradually developing forms of speech which bore little resemblance to the original tongues. At the time the spacefold drive was invented, humanity spoke tens of thousands of different languages. Interestingly, the rate of language localization has remained roughly the same since that period, at an average of 3.8 distinct languages per planet.

Most alien languages have proven difficult to impossible for humans to learn, and the class of people who can interpret between humans and aliens is extremely small. Diplomatic events are generally administered with the help of powerful cybernetic installations. Nor are there many alien loan words in human languages; indeed, some alien languages have no concept comparable to that of a word. Despite that, there are human languages with significant alien influence. For example, wherever Ferrets live next to humans, they have developed common languages which tend to have very simple grammars and large vocabularies borrowed from both species.

Universal Languages and Trade Speech

From these earliest days, the Spacers have spoken an internal language of their own, called the Trade Speech, or sometimes simply Trade. Originally a pidgin of Earth languages, it has changed much less rapidly than planetside languages, and the first forms of it are still comprehensible to Spacers today. The spread and success of Trade Speech is partly a result of the Spacers' unique position, and also a reason why they have kept that position long past the loss of their monopoly on space travel. Since Trade Speech is spoken by one of the few groups to maintain contacts all across human space, it has become a lingua franca, and since the Spacers by definition are the most skilled speakers of the language, they have often found themselves in demand for their linguistic abilities as much as for their technical skills.

Trade Speech is not unique among starside languages; there are and have been many languages spoken by other factions occupying more than one planet. These have tended to succeed and fail in direct proportion to the political strength of their patrons. The Spartan military for millenia has operated under a common language which all recruits must learn, and given the prominent place of the military in Spartan society it should surprise nobody that their army speech is widely used by most citizens of Spartan Hold. Many Founders take pride in speaking a clan language which they can trace all the way back to Earth origins, although this has been gradually dying out for some time and skill in it is little more than a status symbol now. Pilgrims preserve the language of the prophet Xarus as a religious duty, considering it necessary to learn his prophecies without translation.

Various groups at times have tried to create artificial common languages, most notably some Empaths and Inlookers. Without exception, these have all failed in their lofty purposes, although on some planets variants of them are still spoken. These artificial language movements have been responsible for at least five planetside wars, typically by being the stealthy edge of radical groups with more ambitious social goals than a common language. Linguists for thousands of years have maintained that no real universal language can exist, artificial or natural, unless it is strictly limited in scope and has some powerful external force mandating its continued existence. Without such strictures, languages invariably adapt and change to local conditions. Despite this, there is a constant stream of groups attempting to create new artificial languages.

Balo

One artificial language, Balo, is of tremendous importance due to its use within the Imperial Court. It is an ancient written language brought into use by the first Empress, Freya, in the earliest days of the Empire. Its goals were similar to those of other artificial languages: to provide a common tongue used for the business of the Empire. In several important ways it differs, though, and these explain its success and continued use to the present day. First, it is explicitly a written language and not intended for normal human speech. Its grammar is simple and absolutely regular with the goal of being unambiguous and easy to translate, into both human and alien languages. In many ways, it is as much a computer language as a human one. Second, it has a stable and powerful patron - an official Imperial language committee which publishes mandatory guidelines for the use of Balo. Since the first days of its use, Balo has been mandated as the only language used in court law - all official correspondence must be written in it following the official rules strictly. Third, the Imperial Language Committee meets regularly to extend the vocabulary as needed, decreeing its evolution rather than trust it to chance.

None of these considerations make Balo immune to the pressures that change language. Over time, people who write it have also begun to speak it among themselves. The ILC resolutely refuses to consider extending the language to cover speech, or even to provide pronunciation rules, and all these Balo-derived languages have fragmented and evolved just as other human languages. Most have died out, although a few are still spoken by particular networks and factions. There have also been several unofficial attempts to broaden it as a written language, all of which have failed as the ILC not only refused to recognize other sources but the Imperial Court backed up its decisions with fines and penalties for those who did not use proper Balo.

Undoubtedly the biggest challenge to the use of Balo was the second schism. During the first schism, the Consuls and their people continued to follow the guidelines of the ILC without actually acknowledging their authority in any way. Historians generally consider that by this time the benefits of standardization were so obvious that there was no serious interest in using a separate language. The conditions of the second schism, however, were such that the ILC could not effectively rule everywhere. One of the lesser known achievements of John 14th was to reconcile various dialects of Balo that had sprung up during the schism.