#8970

I don't think humans would have any legally recognised languages, so any language distinction being made between humans would have to be done by humans to humans. This doesn't come without grouping, which humans would find very difficult to do. I assume that they would have way less language families than we do here, unless they managed to keep any languages from earth directly (that option doesn't appeal to me because the most common and easiest language would dominate, which would be American English, and I feel uncomfortable saying that the human language would be English lol.)

Aliens however probably have a lot of languages, BUT MORE INTERESTINGLY, A LOT OF DIALECTS. Different exterior body parts such as beaks and lips and teeth arrangements don't suggest a lack of speech capabilities (think of how city crows can mimic human speech almost perfectly, alongside a lot of other birds) but different interiors can really change what sounds you're able to produce. Considering we've seen wegyien with multiple tongues, they can definitely have variation in their throats, meaning they would have a (heavy) accent, and if grouped together often (as wegyien seem to be?) that can develop into a dialect. Standing upright vs not standing upright is a big factor in how much variety you can produce in your speech.

I know Freddie is a segyien who has a wife and kids but I have no idea how he did allat. He just has good game I guess. He certainly didn't talk his wife into falling in love with him, he has like, An Eye.

Humans have gone through a lot of genetic engineering but I don't think their voices were impacted a lot? Not for any lore reason I don't think. Probably just because how would you express that without heavy ugly editing.

Someone find me that panel, I can't do it for the life of me, but there was something about Luka and Heperu, and how he was able to understand Heperu's gossiping or something.

Rebellion would have a mix of human languages, a very deliberate mix if they're smart. What's more important about rebellion imo is that their mission related talk would eventually bleed into casual speech. I think they would also use sign/gesture a lot. I do not assume that any sign language from earth would be retained after #alieninvasion unless there was a very strong human effort for otherwise. They're very frequently restrained by the hands/arms after all.

Now that we got allat out of the way, ivti and their language issues!

Till is mute in my AU. I just did that because I'm not fond of full-recovery after traumatic injury. He uses some form of very simple (proto in this stage) sign language that's mainly derived from mission related gestures. His psychological recovery was also accelerated by being taught these gestures, because it gave him a more efficient means of communication than writing, which freed up a lot of mental space. I don't think he's aware that that helped so much though.

Ivan has brain damage from blood loss, which affects his language usage. Fun fact, we still don't know where the brain processes language! Neurolinguistics is a field that's basically taken over by people who don't know what a brain even looks like. That's what happens when you let my fellow language students try to tell you medical stuff. While Noam Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device (LAD) theory may lead you to think that there is such a thing in the brain, he has not presented a single piece of evidence to support it besides "trust me bro" and I personally will not be trusting bro. Brain damage + language capabilities works in mysterious ways for now. Ivan mainly experiences language issues in the form of difficulty recalling words, which is a memory problem and not a language comprehension problem. However, he's also functionally unable to learn a new language due to lowered frustration tolerance, let alone sign language.

They mainly communicate in written way because of this. Ivan has bad days where migraines make him not incapable but mostly unwilling to read writing. Till will sometimes avoid him entirely in these instances, because he does not like it to be rubbed in that he's mute.

Ivan also has a tendency of being "uncharacteristically mean" because he masks gaps in speech caused by not remembering words by just insulting people. Luka likes this behaviour from him, so the two sometimes engage in very fast paced topicless discussions that no one likes to overhear because they're speaking in perfect Anakt Garden Teachers Pet while they do that.

Speaking of, both Luka and Ivan sound disturbingly Pet-like in their speech. They don't know how to turn it off at first, but Luka learns quickly. Ivan can do the accent (I assume he had a similar one in the slums) and often does mirror, but he sounds awkward due to not using the slang that comes with it.

The kids are monsters at codeswitching (the act of using more than one language or dialect within one conversation), especially the pink one. Luka likes dragging her into the fast paced topicless discussion hour too, since it makes Till stop getting upset with him for "ganging up" with Ivan.