---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 1. Why are we sure the future common language is
 English-based? Because Marc wrote so?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Uh, yeah, cuz'  this isn't just 'the furtue' it's MM's FUTURE(tm)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 2. How many languages are in the 3I? Not dialects. Source
 would be good.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AFAIK, not currently specified.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 3. If the French Navy sends a warship to patrol the South
 China Sea, would it include a linguist with knowledge of
 African languages, which is a continent where French is
 spoken most outside EU.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm guessing here but probably only if someone aboard just happened to have that language skill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 4. What sort of a mission would have had a battleship
 operation alone in the age of battleships?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OTU is based upon 'Age of Sail' & I've read numerous texts documenting ship-of-the-line cruising around solo.
So, maybe or maybe not but I'm leaning towards 'not'.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 5. If a space warship is operating as part of a task
 force, what is the probability of all vessels in the TF
 misjumping, and therefore not being able to confirm loss of
 TF cohesion?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Probablility is obviously slim-to-none & the absent vessel would be noted immediately & reported ASAP.

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 2/12/16, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Instant city
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Friday, February 12, 2016, 3:19 AM

 Lets focus :-)
 1. Why are we sure the future common language is
 English-based? Because Marc wrote so?
 2. How many languages are in the 3I? Not dialects. Source
 would be good.
 3. If the French Navy sends a warship to patrol the South
 China Sea, would it include a linguist with knowledge of
 African languages, which is a continent where French is
 spoken most outside EU.
 4. What sort of a mission would have had a battleship
 operation alone in the age of battleships?
 5. If a space warship is operating as part of a task
 force, what is the probability of all vessels in the TF
 misjumping, and therefore not being able to confirm loss of
 TF cohesion?
 Cheers
 Greg
 On 12/02/2016 8:26 PM,
 "Timothy Collinson" <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk>
 wrote:

 Hi there,

 My apologies, I think I'd understood
 where you were coming from, but had rather gone off on my
 own tangent. 

 On 12 February 2016 at
 07:34, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 Tim,
 I already made the point that I wasn't talking about
 learning languages. The Imperium is large and sophisticated
 enough to identify all poliglots and have one assigned to
 all major warships.
 Although I struggle, with Mr Aiken,
 to quite see this.  I too had envisioned the number of
 languages in the TI as being huge.  However, I *can* see
 major warships having folk who could manage all the major
 races and maybe quite a few of the minor ones that are
 common (Bwaps? Luriani?  - probably depends on exactly
 which bit of the Imperium the ship is assigned to and Your
 Traveller Universe's take on race spread/abundance).
  

 I'm not even talking about the problem such as
 Afghanistan, for which the USN had no interpreters since no
 USS ship ever needed to make a call at one of her ports :-)

 LOL! 
 Absolutely - though in the example I gave of the ship I
 worked on, this would be 'solved' by there being an
 Afghani crew member.  But I appreciate I was in a fairly
 unique situation of such an internationalized crew.  A
 great treat to meet Koreans, Ecuadorians, Cameroonians...

 What I'm talking about is landing on a planet where
 the vernacular is Hittite :-)
 Yes, and as much as I tried to
 address that, I was suggesting that having trained
 *linguists* (not language speakers) on board - which I would
 suspect the IN would certainly have on major warships -
 particularly in border areas -  would be able to tackle
 Hittite.  Even those with a wide experience of known
 languages and not trained as linguists might be able to take
 a stab at beginning to piece it together just from a
 knowledge of the kinds of things that can vary and not being
 stuck in the rut - as many English speakers are (and I
 include myself) - of just one language.

 If it helps, here are some
 key/interesting bits from 'Languages in Traveller'
 (JTAS 16, pp.28-33 by Terry McInnes):
 Galanglic - a dialect of
 Anglic - official language of the Imperium
 widely spoken as a first
 language only by the general population of major worlds on
 comms and trade routes
 spoken to a lesser
 degree on other worlds as a second language - their first
 language will be a different anglic dialect or a totally
 foreign language (your Hittite, presumably!)
 -
 the more isolated a given world is from trade/comms routes,
 the more difficult it will be for a visiting adventurer to
 understand the planet's dominant language
 -
 balkanized worlds may have more than one language

 the article goes on to give
 rules for modifying NPC reaction tables to reflect all
 this.  Essentially characters can suffer a language
 ignorance penalty of from 0 to -3 on the encounter die roll
 - influenced by tech level, starport class and being on an
 x-boat route or not.
 -1 is said to be the
 difference between US and UK English
 -2
 "a Texan speaking with a Liverpudlian or a Georgia
 hillbilly speaking with a native of India"
 -3
 "virtually a different language e.g. Spanish vs
 Italian"

 There are some specifics on
 aliens always being at -3 DM and then an interesting bit on
 naval characters:
 "naval commanders or
 ship captains lost their fleet or ship tactic skill levels
 if they are commanding a fleet or ship with a
 foreign-speaking crew.  The language DM for the crew's
 native world should be subtracted from the 'to hit'
 rolls made on gunnery tables to reflect the disruption in
 the chain of command caused by language problems."
 which rather goes against
 our agreement that large IN ships would have lots of
 interpretation skills!

 On
 the other hand, my assertion that traders would gain an
 advantage by learning the local lingo is supported in the
 next paragraph with a +1 DM when rolling for resale on the
 speculation table in Book 2 if they "have acquired
 skill in a world's foreign language".

 There are then exceptions
 to the penalty DM in starports, for merchants with more than
 three terms, or for balkanized worlds which are more
 complex.

 Back to the situation under
 discussion, certain skills give an advantage:
 liaison - "which
 reflects prior language training"
 streetwise - "...
 includes the ability to quickly pick up a rudimentary
 knowledge of the local language and imitate the local accent
 to as to more easily get along and blend in..."
 broker -
 trader -
     (both these last
 from _Merchant Prince_ special supplement but no note of how
 they affect language)

 Then there are rules for
 learning languages (hour/day with tutor + hour/day study:
 rudimentary knowledge in 6 months; a year of that you're
 fluent on a 6+ roll on 2D).  Living in the language:
 working knowledge in 3 months and automatically fluent
 within a year).  INT 9+ can reduce those times by 25%. 
 Language teaching computer programs available - but
 expensive! (can replace tutor)

 Some other notes:
 Galanglic - based on
 English but has absorbed words from French, German, Russian,
 Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin and Vilani
 Members of the Imperial
 armed forces are required to speak Galanglic in addition to
 their native dialect or language
 Galanglic official language
 of Solomani Confederation BUT
 many Solomani settled
 worlds have Terran descended languages such as Hispanic,
 Germanic, Slavic, Hindi, Hamitic and Sino-tibetan in
 addition to various other tongues carried to the stars by
 the great waves of emigration from Earth during the Rule of
 Man (often to preserve native cultures and languages)
 other variants of Galanglic
 in Sword Worlds and Darrian Confederation
 other examples given are of
 Finnish, Arabic, German, French and Mandarin variants
 Vilani has High Vilani and
 local Vilani based dialects

 There's a Language DM
 Matrix cross referencing tech level with starport type.

 I think if you throw in the
 dozens and dozens of minor races, it's safe to say there
 are hundreds if not thousands of languages in Known Space. 
 :-)

 And given that, I would
 suggest it's not much of a stretch to think that skilled
 linguists are common despite language translation
 software.  (Although I appreciate this may depend on your
 view of Artificial Intelligence in Your Traveller
 Universe.  e.g. Look at Google Translate now.  Pretty
 brilliant as far as I'm concerned on, say, German or
 Swedish (although it still fails at more 'literate'
 language and idiomatic usage); nearly useless on Japanese. 

 Is that the best it will
 be able to do until stronger AI comes in, or will we
 eventually be able to communicate easily with any (known)
 language?  Personally I'm sceptical of the latter
 happening any time soon and personally prefer a Traveller
 universe where there's room for human acquisition of
 language, as per McInnes article, rather than a pure
 reliance on machines.   See the fun to be had in 
 _Adventure 4: Into the Unknown_ where it's quite fun to
 learn a little sign language to throw at the PCs!

 I don't disagree,
 however, that landing on a world with an utterly unknown
 language, wouldn't present problems.  Particularly if
 its a true alien language.  (See the wonderful _The Book of
 Strange New Things_ by Michel Faber for an example of a
 language that feels really alien.)  But problems are what
 adventure is about!  With the right group of players this
 can be a source of a lot of fun/interest - though I can
 imagine others might run a mile.

 I'll finish with
 McInnes' beginning:
 "A word
 innocently uttered in a tavern conversation triggers a major
 brawl . . . a merchant suddenly becomes insulted and cancels
 a profitable trading deal . . . a squad of soldiers fails to
 open fire at a critical moment and a battle is lost.
 These and other disasters can result from
 misunderstandings caused by dialect and language differences
 as adventurers journey from world to world and interact with
 the local populations."

 tc

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