A Thought on Linguistics

You know, I’ve watched Stargate SG-1 for quite a long time now. I didn’t catch it when it was on Showtime, but back when it was on Scifi Fridays with Farscape and Lexx… Them were the good ol’ days.

Now, I have a bit of a problem with Stargate SG-1, and it stems from the use of language. I’m not talking about the technical terms; I’m talking about the fact that the Goa’uld and even the fucking Ori speak English. Everywhere they go, in fact, English might as well be the main language. The Asgard, the Nix, the Furlings, the Tok’ra, even the Wraith on Atlantis speak English. The only race I can recall off the top of my head to not speak English is the green-skinned race with three digits that used to be the Goa’uld hosts.

I understand that it’s hard to do a show with a bunch of subtitles, I know this. But if there a national language barriers on Earth, then for the sake of realism, there should be intergalactic language barriers in science fiction. To top it off, the show doesn’t even introduce language barriers in the show and find their way around them; the audience is just left to believe that the rest of the universe speaks English.

On the fantasy side, though, the linguist JRR Tolkein actually created his languages prior to making his elves and stuff like that. His languages entirely predated his story, and were the basis of his creations. He said something to the effect of, “When you create the languages, the cultures make themselves.” 

I’m not saying that everytime you create something, you have to create a language. It does add something in the way of realism without a doubt, but I would suppose that badly-constructed languages would take away from a story much more than it does to have the whole universe speak English.

~ by omfgjaron on 24 September 2008.