As I never desist from repeating, Flat Black was intended from the start for adventures in which more-or-less rational and cosmopolitan PCs encounter, decipher, and circumvent or exploit the oddities of strange but rational human societies on a succession of exotic planets. That makes it pretty much essential that PCs be able to talk to the locals nearly everywhere they go. Moreover, I have seen a few RPG rule sets that do a fair job of modelling characters’ knowledge of languages and limits on mutual intelligibility, but I have never yet seen one that makes it fun not being able to talk to the NPCs. RP¹ is a talky medium, and I enjoy it best when everyone² can just talk to each other.
So the first version of the Flat Black background document didn’t mention languages, and we just went on playing in English without worrying about it. Then there was an unfortunate encounter between a character-player with a degree in linguistics and a game with rules for knowledge of languages. An unfortunate question was asked. A perfectly reasonable Watsonian rationalisation explanation was offered. A vigorous debate ensued. A Doyleist argument was made. A poll was conducted. My players and other commentators ended up agreeing that for Doyleist reasons it is is best in Flat Black to ignore characters’ possible language limits and just get on with the stilted Vancean dialogue. But the Watsonian explanation is still there, and I still think it makes a lot of sense. Continued loss of linguistic diversity may be deplorable³, but it is plausible.
So here’s what happened in Flat Black, and why your PCs can speak to everyone everywhere⁴.
The drastic loss of language diversity on Earth in the 20th century, brought to us by radio, roads, and railways⁵, continued and even accelerated through the 21st centuries. People travelled for work and commercial opportunities, and they learned regional linguas franca for work, trade, and mass communications. Migrating to cities and travelling for work and commerce, they intermarried and formed mixed communities and families; children grew up using regional linguas franca outside the home; they brought up their children speaking the regional languages of their communities rather than the local languages of their grandparents. Besides which, many governments encouraged the use of national standard languages (e.g. in schooling, the law and courts, and by the bureaucracy) and some even deliberately suppressed regional patois. Of perhaps 50,000 languages spoken when the printing press was invented, about six or seven thousand are still spoken now, and 90% of those are in rapid decline. Air travel, urbanisation, TV, movies, and mobile phones have globalised language extinction; about a dozen languages are flourishing (English, Standard Chinese (Putonghua-Guoyu), Spanish, Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, French, Malay (Malaysian-Indonesian), Portuguese, Russian….), the rest are languishing or declining.
In Flat Black those trends continued through the 21st century, so that by the time the first colonies were despatched almost everyone spoke one of the dozen regional languages, and the writing was on the wall for the ~500 other languages that still survived. Moreover, International Business English⁶ had cemented its position as the language of aviation, international business, diplomacy, scientific and scholarly publication, higher education, international co-operation, international discourse, and much global popular culture. IBE was the global lingua franca, widely spoken as a second language, especially by pilots &c., travellers, business folk, highly-trained scientists, scholars and technicians, the educated, and people involved in international discourse and co-operation.
Then International Standard English did to Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Malay, Hindi and the rest what they had done to seven thousand local languages during the 21st century. By AD 2200 ISE was spoken everyone and by everyone. By AD 2300 “Standard” was the only first language on Earth⁷.
When the first colony was despatched (Avalon, on Tau Ceti III) in 2091 it was a hugely international effort that needed to spread its net across the globe to find enough reckless adventurers with the advanced expertise needed. IBE was their common language. IBE is what all their technical manuals and reference materials were available in. IBE is what they spoke among themselves and what their children learned at home and in the playground. But, because of the ever-increasing stream of continued migration from Earth, Avalon (and the seven other colonies subsequently established on Tau Ceti III) followed Earth’s development of IBE into ISE and then Standard. Everyone speaks Standard on Tau Ceti.
Other languages did survive on Earth in the 22nd century, and a few of the colonies established then were established by regional or cultural concerns that for various reasons adopted official languages other than English.
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Navabharata was a national-prestige project of the Republic of India, and its official language was Standard Hindi (a register of Hindustani). But some of the participants were native Bengali-speakers or speakers of Indian English, all the technical manuals and reference works were in English, so people talked a lot of IBE at work and all the children had to be taught IBE. Then in 2130 the Indian government “privatised” the colony and it started accepting migrants from all over the world. About 2155 people started arriving on Navabharata who did not speak Hindustani, but they stopped going after a while. Then in the Age of Piracy there were invasions by Standard-speaking adventurers from other worlds On Navabharata people speak Navabharatan English, a dialect of English that is mutually comprehensible with Standard, but heavily accented and with a lot of Hindustani borrowings. The divine caste (who are educated off-world) speak Standard as a second dialect. The population of Navabharata is 0.137% of Humanity.
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Hijra⁸ was a conservative Sunni Muslim theocratic utopia. It adopted Classical Arabic as its official language and deliberately suppressed IBE. And as Islam declined on Earth along with the general decline of frank supernaturalism Hijra’s stream of migrants from Earth dwindled: there was no overwhelming flood of ISE-speaking and Standard-speaking monoglots in the late migration period. On Hijra they speak Arabic, and some people, especially researchers and technical experts learn to read Standard. The population of Hijra is 0.065% of Humanity.
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Xin Tian Di was a national-prestige project of the Republic of China, established with Putonghua as its official language. It received over 2.5 million ISE and Standard speaking immigrants after 2250, besides all their reference materials and popular culture. The everyday language on Xin Tian Di is a Chinese-influenced version of Standard, the upper classes speak Putonghua as a language of refinement and high culture. The population of Xin Tian Di is 0.31% of Humanity.
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Paraíso was a “national” prestige project of Mercosur, a South-American union of nations that did not long survive. It was established with Spanish and Portuguese as joint official languages, but all the early colonist were highly-educated people with manuals and technical references in IBE, and the colony was privatised that thrown open to international migrants after only 15 years. So the colony switched to IBE, ISE, and Standard as it received continual and increasing flows of migrants from an ever-more monoglot standard-speaking world. They speak a Spanish-influences dialect of Standard on Paraíso. The population of Paraíso is 0.43% of Humanity.
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Fureidis was a “secular, but culturally Muslim” colony that early on attracted a majority of speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Bengali, and Malay. IBE was the language they had in common and the language of their technical manuals and reference materials. They spoke IBE at work and in schoolyards, and as they intermarried they increasing spoke it at home. Then there came later migrants from ISE-speaking and Standard-speaking Earth. On Fureidis they speak a dialect of Standard that has influences from the other languages, mostly Malay. The population of Fureidis is 0.053% of Humanity.
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Covenant was a joint Israeli secular and Jewish religious separatist colony that also attracted dribs and drabs of religious communities that thought they would be compatible, “Noahide” religious innovators etc. It originally had Modern Hebrew as its official language, but that was a revival that didn’t take. Covenant struggled to attract migrants in the later migration period, so the influence of Standard-speaking late migrants was not overwhelming. Nevertheless most people on Covenant abandoned Hebrew. They on Covenant speak a dialect of Standard influenced by Hebrew. The population of Covenant is 0.433% of Humanity.
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Persatuan was a secular utopist venture that, for cultural reasons, attracted mostly migrants from Indonesia and Malaysia. They spoke Malay on Persatuan through the Age of Isolation; highly-educated people learned Standard to access standard references and technical publications. Now Persatuan is learning Standard to modernise. The population of Persatuan is 0.106% of Humanity.
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Khemet started out as a pan-African secular separatist colony, and suffered from a crazy attempt to revive ancient Egyptian as an official language. It attracted many early migrants who spoke French, Arabic, and Swahili, but as usual they had IBE in common and used references and manuals in IBE. Then they got 1.5 million migrants from ISE-speaking and Standard-speaking Earth. People speak Standard on Khemet. 0.144% of Humanity
Apart from that, all the colonies were either broadly international in the foundations or had regional roots in English-speaking North America, or were founded after everyone on Earth spoke ISE or Standards to begin with.
¹ Outside of that branch of it that is closest to skirmish wargaming.
² Within reason, naturally. I have made effective use of characters who can’t talk or have no common languages with the PCs for the purposes of particular adventures.
³ As a stolid monoglot who likes access to information and stories, I perhaps deplore it less than those players who are linguists. Sorry about that.
⁴ Without having to assume, let alone mention, high-intensity high-tech language course delivered by AI teachers on interstellar liners, nor computerised automatic simultaneous interpretation running on wearable computers. (Such things, implausible thirty years ago, are on the edge of reality now.)
⁵ And the decline of violence.
⁶ Not exactly the same as the English spoken in Anglophone countries.
⁷ I don’t say this is inevitable: Flat Black is not futurism. I don’t say it would be a good thing: Flat Black is not a utopia. I just say that this is why you don’t nave to deal with lack of mutual comprehension when talking to NPCs in most Flat Black adventures.
⁸ I have to change that to a better name.