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I'm no huge sci-fi fan, but I have seen a lot of sci-fi movies and read various sci-fi books in my time. When it comes to interaction between Earthlings and aliens from Planet X, the assumption seems to be that whatever language the aliens speak, that's the language spoken throughout Planet X. We know that that's far from true on Earth. So why isn't there an assumption that any given inhabited extra-terrestrial planet would have a similar diversity of languages, with perhaps the same degree of mutual unintelligibility as is found on Earth? The concept of different "countries" existing on other planets seems never to have occurred in the stuff I've read/seen. I'm sure there must be some examples, though. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean, and it is rare that such things are written into the story although not completely absent from the genre. The episode entitled "Dear Doctor" from the most recent incarnation of the Star Trek series, Enterprise, used the language difference as a plot point. Dismas|(talk)03:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Two reasons come to mind. (1) Writing convenience, the same reason that many authors put universal translator gadgets in their stories. (2) Our civilization is not very old, and a more grown-up civilization might have had time to settle down to one culture, one country, and one language. I remember a story that specifically made this point -- aliens arrive on Earth (or send a message or something) and they've figured out our language from our radio or TV broadcasts, but the first thing they say is something like "Nous komme en peace". They've assumed that any civilized species would have a single language and they're speaking ours (and presumably all those words they've heard like "komme" and "come" and "venir" are just synonyms). --Anonymous, 06:03 UTC, February 1, 2009.
Following EC: Some of the answer is that sci-fi authors that get published write stories that appeal to a large readership. Humans tend to be more interested in things of a human nature. So we assume that aliens that we encounter are either animal like and can't communicate with us (see Predator (franchise)) or are more intelligent than we are (or at least as bright as we assume we are). That also would mean that they have developed a high degree of communication within their own world. English has gained importance as an international language for human use. This despite the fact that more people speak Mandarin as native speakers than do English and attempts to create an artificial international language (e.g. Esperanto).
It stands to reason that intelligent aliens would exploit the advantages of a common language for their world. They would likely also use that for communicating with humans. What the sci-fi writers have right is that we would be rather hard put to communicate with any species whose method of communication is vastly different from ours. If e.g. we'd meet a species that communicated by releasing a bubble of methane every couple of months, we'd likely not even see it. --76.97.245.5 (talk) 06:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aaah a European Milka invasion. I always suspected "moo" wasn't the whole story. Would you care to translate for us? Just look how they conceal their true purple color under tan and black and white camouflage. :-) 76.97.245.5 (talk) 11:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in answer to your question, the aliens coming to Earth must have travelled for a fairly long while if they aren't *very* technologically advanced, in which case they'll have a unified system. Otherwise, there will have been a language in which all on board used for convenience, much like many international organisations use English (and a few French also). So they'll all understand one language, even if many exist on their planet(s). - Jarry1250(t, c)11:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
At least in part, it comes down to the aim(s) of the writer. Science fiction is often described as being part of a broader genre called speculative fiction. The purpose of a science fiction story isn't to serve as a sort of travelogue or documentary; the goal is to explore one or more 'what-if' scenarios — hopefully framed by an exciting and engaging story.
A new planet or an alien race is a convenient tool of the trade — a writer says, "I'd like to explore a culture that is different from anything on Earth in this specific way", so he creates the world or race that he needs. It is relatively rare that an author will want to have human guests interacting with more than one or two native populations, so a common language is just assumed. (As the reader, you are welcome to make yourself feel better by assuming that the protagonist learned the alien language on tape during his long space flight, or that the important aliens have learned a common galactic language to aid in commerce and diplomacy.) From a story perspective, having to bring a translator along with the hero is usually an unnecessary complication. (Occasionally, losing the translator is an important plot device, though....)
There are at least a few science fiction stories I can think of which feature language barriers. Barry B. Longyear's novella Enemy Mine centers on a human and an alien trapped alone, learning each other's language. Larry Niven's Ringworld and The Mote in God's Eye deal with humans and aliens who speak a number of unique languages. Connie Willis has a rather amusing and absurdist take on interspecies communication in her short story Spice Pogrom. Barriers of language tend to make an appearance in SF stories that explore 'first contact' type scenarios. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In one of the later episodes of Babylon 5, they address this issue and decide that humans are just weird. There's a few episodes concerned with 'improving interspecies understanding' or something like that, so each major race presents something they think represents them. The Centauri throw a party, the Menbari perform a religious ceremony, a few other species do stuff in the background, and at the end the captain takes a bunch of ambassadors down an endless row of humans, introducing them to some of our many cultures. Occasionally other episodes mention some minor race squabbling about who stepped on whose toes, but the major races are all fairly homogeneous besides humans. Black Carrot (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"The Mote In God's Eye" (Larry Niven) and especially it's sequel, "The Gripping Hand" have aliens that have a wild profusion of languages - some of which are made up more or less on the spot to help the aliens from one group talk to the others. It also goes further and proposes intelligent aliens of multiple species from the same planet - which is something we don't often think about. There are a lot of things that sci-fi authors tend to leave out because they only have so many pages in which to tell the story and if they spend too many of them getting into all of the details of the alien civilisation then the plot or the 'depth' of their characters will suffer. This problem is ten times worse in the limited time available within a movie or a TV episode. SteveBaker (talk) 20:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In "The Languages of Pao", by Jack Vance, different groups of people are deliberately made to learn different languages as a way of promoting distinct identities for them. --Anonymous, 05:50 UTC, February 2, 2009.
There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation about learning each other's language, called something like "Darmok and Gilad at Tanagra". An early original Star Trek also featured the "universal translator", but then they decided that was boring and just had all aliens speak English.
Given enough time, perhaps any planetary civilization will speak a single language. We seem to be headed that way, as more and more words in each language are borrowed from others. So eventually we may end up with a single language, except for the word "butterfly", of course, which (for some reason) must be different in every language. :-) StuRat (talk) 00:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And Star Trek does have universal translators -- the aliens seem to be speaking English but that's just because for our convenience we're hearing the translations. (You back there pointing out that often they also seem to speak English among themselves... go away!) The (rather silly) episode Darmok was about a language that the translator couldn't handle. This sort of situation came up to a lesser extent on the later series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and especially on the prequel series Enterprise. --Anonymous, cinq heures huit minutes du matin UTC, le 2 fevrier 2009.
But they didn't show the translator in most episodes, even when there's a one-on-one interaction between a human and alien, such as those naked interactions that always required Kirk to zip up his boots afterwards. StuRat (talk) 10:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I call it laziness myself, or rather ease of writing. It's difficult enough to come up with an alien culture, let alone three or four major ones for each race (and pretending that there are other minor ones that you won't explain). As mentioned above, Babylon 5 has a few variations. The Centauri had two dominant sentient races on their planet in their history and wiped the other one out. The Minbari have three primary cultures (and languages and everything else) based on your caste, and further variation based on which clan you're from within the caste. Another race ended up wiping themselves out because they eliminated another race they were co-dependent on.
A lot of writers have a nod to cultural variation, showing that it exists, but to go into a lot of detail would probably be too long-winded, dilute the plot and be edited out in revisions. Steewi (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
All airplane communication, anywhere in the world, is in English (or assumed to be - two Russian planes, say, could speak Russian, but if one is non-Russian or heading into a non-Russian airport, the communication will be in English, if only a technical/jargon-y English). It's reasonable that once (if) space flight occurs to the extent that a global/solar system/interstellar "space traffic control" is needed, a single language will be used, maybe English. So it's not crazy to say that if we ever contacted aliens, we would speak a single language and they would speak a single language. (I think it's unlikely there would actually be any meaningful communication between us and aliens, but having more than one language per species wouldn't be the problem). 08:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you all for those absorbing and thought-provoking answers. To return to Earth, I can't see it ever happening that we'll all one day speak the same language. Not ever. Because the cost in terms of the loss of cultural richness would be far too high a price to pay for whatever practical efficiencies might ensue. And humans like to be different. Sure, we do borrow words from each other's languages, and the rate of that has probably increased; but borrowing entire systems of vocalisation is a whole new ball game, and that's what would have to happen if Chinese and English ever "merged" into one language. And that's just 2 out of thousands. Anyway, I didn't want to start off a new topic, so I'll stop now. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You've dragged me back. Yes, some languages have died out, and more will do so. Does that mean that all but one will eventually die out, leaving only one world language? We can't tell the future, but NO. (Pedantic point: Even in that extremely unlikely event, they wouldn't be extinct, but dead, because we'd have massive amounts of information about their grammars, how they sounded when spoken, etc. And humans being what they are, they'd revive many of them, so they wouldn't stay dead.) -- JackofOz (talk) 05:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It could be simply for the sake of good story telling. In reality, if alien culture would even superficially resemble Earth, we would expect hundreds of common languages on each planet, and hundreds of different cultures, and layer that with the hundreds of different alien species and it becomes a mind-numbingly complex way to describe the universe. It makes for a more entertaining (though somewhat less realistic) story to simply give each species one uniform culture and one uniform langauge, and have everyone talk through universal translators. Sometimes scrupulous realism and telling a compelling story come into direct conflict; good authors know when to abandon realism to maintain the good story. --Jayron32.talk.contribs05:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Internet has gone a long way towards pushing English as a 'universal' language. Still, the vast majority of pages are either in English or are available in English versions. This is the first time in all of history when such a large percentage of the world's population has both wanted and NEEDED to talk to each other. Just look at Wikipedia - close to 2.8 million articles in English - less than a third of that in German. English has only 300 million native speakers (behind Mandarin, Hindustani and Spanish) - the number of Mandarin and Hindustani articles is tiny - and there are only 400,000 in Spanish. So if you are one of the 870 million mandarin speakers or 366 million hindustani speakers - where are you going to go to find out what the atomic weight of copper is - or who was the 4th Dr.Who? SteveBaker (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think that figure (300 million native speakers of English) is a little low, Steve, but it may depend on what you mean by “native speakers”. The table here adds up to 569 million people who speak English as either a first or additional language. Then there are all the little countries listed below the table, which would probably amount to another 50-odd million. So my estimate would be double yours. It's still way behind Mandarin, though. Re the internet effect: I think this has caused more people than would otherwise have been the case to learn enough about English to use the internet effectively. But whether they ever choose to use English in their daily lives away from the computer is another thing. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes. I see these use different sources, and measure things in different ways. But just focussing only on people who speak English as a first language, we get very broadly the same general, rough figure, somewhere north of 300 million but not as Arctic as 400 million. Probably around the latitude of London, funnily enough. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You say you have beer and wine, but I can’t find it in my store. Why not?
We have to get special licenses to sell beer and wine on a store-by-store basis. The process takes longer in some localities than others. Rest assured that it’s our desire to provide each ALDI store with our complete product line and will continue to work to achieve this.
I think they may be in for some nasty surprises. Not only do they have to get a separate license for each store, they also will have to follow the local laws on sale of alcohol. Those can differ from store to store because they are in different counties or municipalities. I just can't picture Aldi investing the manpower to move all the wine and beer boxes off the shelves on Saturday and putting them back on Monday morning. (They'd have to do that here.) In some places they might be sheer out of luck because they also sell candy and stuff for kids and don't have a separate section for alcoholic beverages. Good luck. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 15:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't always that easy, usually due to local laws. In Colorado, you are only allowed to own one liquor store. So, if you own a chain, only one of them may be a liquor store. This protects the mom-and-pop liquor stores, but it means that large chains are usually prohibited from selling more than 3.2 beer. --Mdwyer (talk) 18:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the UK, such stores just have curtains that pull down over the relevant shelves at times when they aren't allowed to sell alcohol. --Tango (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is what stores do in Finland as well, put the alcohol under lock and key. Most commonly, they use a type of metal shutters that can just be rolled down and locked in place. That way they don't have to move anything away -- all they need to do is move some of the more prominently displayed stuff in place behind the shutters, which takes maybe a minute, and lock it up, and go about the rest of the evening as per normal. I'd be surprised (but not shocked) to learn that this kind of a setup wouldn't be sufficient to satisfy the powers that be. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In some places in the US there are a fixed number of liquor licenses in a given area, so you have to convince some other business to sell their license to you. StuRat (talk) 00:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Having lived in a few different states and a couple different locations within those, I can tell you that the laws and ordinances vary wildly from place to place, even with in the same state. From my experience:
Illinois laws can vary by county and even by town/city. One town that I knew of would not allow alcohol to be sold between the hours of midnight and noon on Sundays. For the longest time, the town I grew up in was dry (meaning no alcohol could be sold at all). Although, there was a bar that had been in business for years before the vote was passed to make the town dry. So, the bar was allowed to remain open. This bar is also across the street from a high school. Not allowed in most places due to certain businesses having to be a certain distance away from schools. But the bar was built before these laws came into effect. It's still there and so is the school.
Tennessee laws again vary wildly but in my experience are more strict than Illinois'. Every Wal-Mart that I was in had rolling metal shutters that would come down around the alcoholic beverage section of the coolers. Often alcohol was not allowed to be sold on Sundays. I worked Sundays at a small general store. I never had to memorize the beer prices because I couldn't sell it on a Sunday. The next town down the road, a ten minute drive, allowed beer sales on Sundays. Some places don't allow alcohol to be served in strip clubs. If you want alcohol, you have to bring the bottle yourself and they'll sell you cups because you aren't allowed to drink out of a bottle of more than 12 oz. In general, if you want to live in a repressive state, move to TN.
Vermont sets the prices for alcohol. If you own a liquor store, you have to sell according to the set prices. From what I've seen, alcohol can't be in the same section as food. The larger supermarkets have a special room just for the alcohol. Meanwhile, smaller liquor stores, or package stores as they're sometimes called here, have a limit as to the types and amount of food that they can sell. Chips (crisps for you Brits) and pretzels and such but nothing more. Gas stations can sell beer but nothing stronger.
New Hampshire, I think, requires all the liquor stores to be state owned.
So, if ALDI wants alcohol in their stores, each store will have to jump through different legal hoops to get the products on the shelf. Dismas|(talk)02:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Have a peek at this search, [1], it seems depends on the local council. They may take many factors into consideration, for instance, how many other licensed premises there are in the area. Near me we have a Tesco and a Sainsbury's within the same shopping centre - Sainsbury's moved in before Tesco and applied for a license, which the council granted, however when Tesco applied they were refused on the grounds that Sainsbury's already had a license and were less than 100 metres down the shopping centre, but also there was a pub in the centre and the council felt three licenses were too many for just one shopping centre. Tesco eventually bought the pub's license I believe and as a result the pub shut down. I just saw the US part in the title, ignore me. Lanfear's Bane | t12:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I am going sightseeing in the DC area and I was wondering about seeing the Pentagon while I'm there. So I just wanted to ask a few questions about it:
What are the hours that the Pentagon is open? What days is it open? Who is it open to? What parts are open to the public? How "out of place" would some average joe look if he was walking around it? What about someone in the military? I read the Wikipedia article and the pentagon's web page about "guided tours", but is it really like that? It says there are like fast food restaurants there... can I just go there to get food?
Um have you considered looking at the Pentagon's website? The article you read links to it as a source! (I'm doubtful you can visit the fast-food restaurants, they're almost definitely for staff only. I also doubt you can 'just walk around', you'd almost definitely be arrested or if your unlucky, shot, if you succesfully tried and someone saw you. Of course most likely you wouldn't even get in) Nil Einne (talk) 18:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Pentagon's website says that guided tours are available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. by reservation only. You do have to present ID, and the restaurants appear to be off-limits. – 7418:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Where do you see the bit about the restaurant? Usually these government buildings have cafeterias that the public can also use, but I don't know about the Pentagon. The cafeterias are usually nothing very interesting. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Tours -> FAQ -> Can we eat inside the Pentagon?:
Tour guides will not stop so that groups may eat inside the Pentagon. Groups may coordinate with other Pentagon personnel to escort them in the Pentagon before or after the tour.
Which still leaves the possibility of eating at a restaurant technically not inside the Pentagon (if such exists) but seems to answer the OP's question (unless he has contacts inside the Pentagon). – 7420:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
None of the above. There's a long Washington Post piece on this very question: article. Mostly it boils down to — the original Pentagon site was an irregularly-shaped piece of land, and the only way to fit enough office space in was to use an irregular pentagon shape. Before construction began, a larger site became available, and the regular pentagon design was adopted for aesthetic and engineering reasons. (It was also too late to redesign the entire structure from scratch — the War Department wanted to start occupying the building in just six months, and have the entire project finished in a year.) Page 4 of the article shows both the old and new sites and layouts. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Things have probably changed in the last decade, but it used to be possible for the general public to walk in certain parts of the Pentagon. The Pentagon metro station was linked by tunnel with the inside of the building, where there was a small shopping arcade and a few fast food places. This was a very depressing space of gray concrete, entirely windowless and undecorated, somewhere in the underground bowels of the building. Security gates existed beyond that little arcade, preventing unbadged members of the public from proceding any further. --Xuxl (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just got a Facebook private message from a friend of my sister's, who's a native German speaker. I have my Facebook preferences set to e-mail me about private messages, so I got an e-mail about the message. What is strange here is that the title of the message is (name) hat dir eine Nachricht auf Facebook gesendet. It's my sister's friend who's using Facebook in German, not me. I'm using it in English. Isn't this done the wrong way around? What if I didn't understand German and my sister's friend had to communicate with me in English, like she has to with my sister's husband? Does this happen to anyone else? Has anyone had problems with this? JIP | Talk19:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right - someone mentioned to me that they added a German friend the other day and their (English) Facebook temporarily changed to German. Angus Lepper(T, C)00:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Inappropriate language localization appears to be a popular plague among application designers. My old University's webmail account used to provide me with service in whatever language was appropriate for the computer from which I logged in. Presumably, they believed that their students would enjoy the local flavor when travelling. On the bright side, I now know how to send email in four languages. Don't forget to logga ut when you're finished. Bork bork bork. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just like ten of all Trades I've been harassed by my e-mail trying to talk to me in various local languages. The worst thing I've tried to do though was to send an e-mail in Spanish from a computer running a Swedish operating system using a Russian keyboard setup on an American kwyboard in Germany. Ugh! I gave up on yahoo mail during my last trip to Europe because they kept re-routing me to their local mail sites. It took months to wean my notebook off foreign language ads. (I always had that urge to order Egyptian cable TV service after a trip to Egypt. Guess they would have charged by the length of cable. :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.97.245.5 (talk) 01:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For users with a default browser language other than English, many websites will appear in that language, such as Facebook, Youtube, and Google. Anyone know how to change the language of such a website, without changing the default browser language? ~AH1(TCU)17:10, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Non-Co-Ed Schools: Social Interactions with Opposite Sex
For students that go to non-co-educational schools, such as Eton College or Haberdascher Askes', will their social interactions with the opposite sex be not as good as students who go to co-ed schools since their exposure to the opposite sex will be less? Acceptable (talk) 20:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It will vary from child to child. I think it's obvious that if you have absolutely no social interaction with the opposite sex and then suddenly start interacting with them (when going to university, perhaps), you would probably be quite nervous. However, just because you don't interact with the opposite sex at school doesn't mean you don't interact with them at all. --Tango (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(Edit confict) I don't believe any data exists because of the very vague concepts involved here. Here are some points to consider:
What constitutes a 'good' interaction, and does it depend on the person(s) involved?
How do you count them?
What is a 'social interaction'?
What about out factors such as social standing, ethnicity, frame of mind, upbringing. Will these not have an effect on the number and/or effectiveness of interactions?
You can see how hard it would be to get any amount of reliable data in this area, although there might be one or two personalised studies. - Jarry1250(t, c)21:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(EC)Single-sex education lamentably doesn't say much on the topic. The absence of that topic in the article probably means the social interaction issue is anecdotal rather than pathological. Since the boys are not prohibited from interacting with girls off campus or over break, I doubt they will be that disadvantaged in co-ed social interactions. It may be harder to maintain a relationship because the boys have less time to interact with girls because of class and heavy schoolwork. Although I couldn't find anything on the subject, I would bet that boys-only schools occasionally have social events with neighboring co-ed or girls-only schools. The students may have attended a coeducational school before they enrolled. The earliest a student can enroll in Eton is 13, so the boys there probably have quite a bit of social interaction with females under their belt if they went somewhere coed previously. Haberdasher Askes' enrolls from age 4, but Haberdascher has Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls for a neighbor. Teenage hormones will no doubt facilitate students seeking out situations involving female peers when they have the time.152.16.15.23 (talk) 21:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, the schools themselves have special events designed to encourage supervised social interaction between Boys' and Girls' schools. School socials aren't as much fun (for most people) when the opposite sex is absent, so they invite the girls/boys from the other school. Debate teams compete against each other, and where I am, at least, the single-sex schools have combined drama productions.
More on topic though, there are still sometimes issues, becuase they aren't used to interacting in particular environments, or are only used to interacting when you're just trying to get into their pants. When you're just interacting as colleagues or friends, it might take some time to get used to having so many opposite sex people around in an every day environment. This isn't guaranteed, of course. Many people take to the situations like ducks to water and hit it off brilliantly. Steewi (talk) 01:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
