Mechanical Prophet

I can't stop drawing her

silly comment on izuma, languages and what it suggests about its history and worldbuilding in alternate UC 0084

so we all know the working language in Izuma is largely Japanese (well, this is a Japanese anime, with in-universe news media largely reflective of 2025 Japan and an internet that is reflective of 2025 Japan)

English is also notably the primary user interface language (it’s very Khara I think)

But other languages do feature — namely Thai, Bahasa, German and Korean and Mandarin.

They mostly serve to help us establish the setting — of a multi-cultural Izuma flourishing in a neutral Side 6, largely unscathed by the war. But the languages are established in a hierarchy of sorts:

We don't see any other language other than English or Japanese in road signs or place names. There's a region where English placenames are predominant — think Aldwych, Knightsbridge and Carrington, and a region where Japanese placenames are dominant: Nenokuni, Ifuya, Ishizone.

This sort of indicates that the original builders of Izuma were likely both English and Japanese, which is why the working language of the banchi are these two languages, indicated by arrival cards and import documents:

Languages other than English and Japanese are all indicative of an immigrant culture. It's in the streets that Nyaan walks in Nenokuni — we see the most linguistic diversity in that setting, which ep1 establishes are 'slums built by immigrants'.

But it's also growing in signs and adverts, an indication that immigrants do have economic power in Izuma:

There are also French road signs, which might indicate that Izuma also has a French section? but we haven't seen that yet. (Izuma's spaceport also uses French.)

The show establishes the refugee/resident divide through language. Highbury, Machu's posh school for debutantes, uses Japanese predominantly and is very monolingual:

Nyaan, an immigrant, writes in English. Her calendar is somehow French and Thai. Her books are however in Japanese and English, and Nyaan also has a university entrance exam prep book in Japanese:

Izuma is a microcosm of metropolitan Japan — if I remember clearly they wanted to establish how Side 6 went unscathed by humanity's conflicts. It's also indicative of how immigration has changed metropolitan Japan to some degree, but I'm not that familiar with Japan to provide commentary at 3am in the morning, so that'll be for another time (or never).

What does that mean in-universe? My guess is that Izuma and Side 6’s banchis were established as joint Anglo-French-Japanese colonies, but when the One-Year War happened, the colony drop occurred and wrecking much of Earth, other cultures proceeded to emigrate into Side 6, changing Izuma in the process (as it builds and rebuilds to accommodate people displaced by war).