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    #31
    Originally posted by Ser Scot A Ellison View Post
    Interesting that the planet has a 24 hour day, roughly. It would have been cool if the day had been shown to be longer than Earth normal.
    It may have, they may have kept similar times but they are just extended e.g ..11 am, 12 am, 13 am, 14 am, 1 pm, 2 pm...

    EDIT: No wait, saw a sign saying 7 days 24 hours.
    Last edited by escyos; 06 May 2011, 08:20 PM.

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      #32
      And Keb is a reference to the planet. Where Oma Desala and the Harsises child were. In SG-1. Think I spelt that second one wrong.
      Last edited by Bagpuss; 10 January 2020, 01:29 AM. Reason: Hotlinks in requoted post edited.

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        #33
        Originally posted by escyos View Post
        It may have, they may have kept similar times but they are just extended e.g ..11 am, 12 am, 13 am, 14 am, 1 pm, 2 pm...

        EDIT: No wait, saw a sign saying 7 days 24 hours.
        But there's no rule that says 24hours on the other side of the galaxy had to conform to Earth norm. For all we know, they divided their days into 24 equal divisions that lasted 1.5 "Earth hours". Most of their wrist watches and other time keeping devices would have failed within a year or two, so there's no reason to believe that they didn't just change the length of the Novan hour.

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          #34
          Eat iz nat imposibl 4 lenguegiz tu evolv in saci menar, ai min luk at da Internet languedj diz deiz
          Spoiler:
          It is not impossible for a language to evolve in such manner, I mean look at the Internet language these days

          I wonder if the Novus language has emoticons
          It's all about startegy. Out-maneuvering the opposition, bending him to your will.
          -Dexter-

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            #35
            The evolved spelling wasn't unique to just the world they visited in Blockade. When they were on Novus going through the database, I noticed archives was spelled with k, rather than ch. At least I'm assuming that's what the recurring abbreviation ARK. was.

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              #36
              Originally posted by Ser Scot A Ellison View Post
              It's the evolution of English over 2000 years. I'm shocked they can read it. Anyone tried to understand Old English from the text without translation?
              There was a radical jump from Old English to Middle English because the Normans brought a historic version of French with them when they invaded England in 1066 and made it the official language of the government. English continued to exist as a spoken language, but people weren't writing in English for a prolonged period of time. Languages that do not have written versions change more rapidly than languages that do because they are more susceptible to dialectal speech and outside influences. In the case of English, this means people had no overarching guide to tell them what words should look or sound like after the Norman Conquest, and it means that many French words were incorporated into English, replacing existing words in the process. French words are so prevalent in English today that the French author Alexandre Dumas once proclaimed, “English is all French, badly pronounced.” Par exemple: Any English word that ends in -ment, comes from French. Hence the French version of "monument" is "monument" (in French, you don't pronounce the "t" and the "e" sounds like an "a"). And that's just the émergée de l'iceberg.

              There was a smaller, but very noticeable jump between Middle English and Modern English in large part because of the printing press. This led to increasing standardization, and it made written materials affordable to a growing number of people. It also helped foster the spread of new words. Google "words coined by..." Shakespeare, Chaucer, Sir Thomas Moore, John Milton, or Charles Dickens to see examples of words that they introduced into our lexicon.

              Schooling was another important factor. In creating modern countries, governments offered increased access to schools as a way to establish a uniform sense of identity. Language was an important part of that as it not only helped to further unify people but also made it easier to conduct business, maintain armies, etc. Think of how important the French language is to French people today as a symbol of their identity. This was manufactured in only the last couple of hundred years by the introduction of public schools, which elevated a standard version of French while suppressing provincial languages (see Occitan as an example) and radically different dialects. Schools similarly worked to create a uniformed standard throughout the British Isles.

              English is still changing, but it's now far more established and defined than it was in the past, so the change is far slower. Consequently, the comparison between what English was like 1,000 years ago and what it would be like in the future is not an apt one. English was preserved for the colonists of Novus through video recordings and written language, so changes made to the language would be more measured. Think of the decision to forgo British spellings of some words. This was the product of a few people simply not liking the way the words looked, so they promoted alternate spellings that either made more sense phonetically, or they dropped letters that were thought to be superfluous. Noah Webster helped to popularize many of those alternate spellings (others, he was less successful at getting people to adopt, like "soop" instead of "soup" or "speek" instead of "speak").

              In some cases, both the original British and Americanized version of words were considered acceptable as recently as the 20th century and old publications would use them interchangeably. Take "canceled" and "cancelled" as an example. You probably have seen people use both versions quite a bit to this day and may have even been unsure of which to use since most spellchecks don't correct either version. However, in the U.K. "cancelled" is preferred, while "canceled" is now the preferred in the United States. Both versions had been used interchangeably for much of the 20th century and both versions still pop up in print, but "canceled" became the more commonly used version in the 1980s and now many schools teach it as the correct way to spell the word.

              In 2,000 years from now, I would very much expect to see more spelling changes like that, the adoption of new slang and foreign words, grammatical changes, and existing words falling out of common usage. I would not, however, expect the disparity between that future version of English to be anywhere near as great as the disparity between Old English and Modern English as long as things keep ticking along like they have been. I would expect even fewer changes from a population of English speakers who remained in isolation for 2,000 years and preserved English in both audio recordings and written forms as there are no outside languages to influence them save for the bits and pieces that the Destiny's dual language speakers passed down. That the major difference is that some people advocated for changing the spelling of certain words to make them more phonetic and their proposed changes were adopted by the general public is extremely reasonable as that's the main way that language has changed in the last 200 years. This period serves as the best model for how English will change in a future where it continues to be well defined and accessible in print.
              Last edited by Xaeden; 12 January 2020, 08:06 PM.

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