Shouldn't the english langauge be diverging

K

KillerBee256

Still Mildly Glowing
First off this is just hypothetical, I know that no dev team will ever try to spend the time to work this kind of thing into a game but... As an anthropology student and some one who's interested langauges I've been thinking, shouldn't English start to diverge into different langauges by the current point in the time line (2280). Thought, it should only be starting, from what I remeber in the real world the (western) roman empire fell in the 400s and the first romance langauges don't show up until the 800s. Thought in some places like the NCR it wouldn't happen at all if they have a school system.
 
I think you are right on the mark. Language would naturally evolve or devolve over time, depending on the population and their scarcity. Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange used Russian-English slang (Nadsat), for Fallout it would most likely be Spanish-English hybrid Language. Mod makers take note…check your dialogue trees and make the necessary adjustments.

http://www.artofeurope.com/kubrick/nadsat.htm
 
FO2 TRIED a little with the language the tribals used, but overall I think in the choice between realism and practicality, realism wins here. It'd be pretty annoying to read something you can barely understand in a game, and I doubt anyone would do it. I mean, even Anne's Irish accent in PS:T was somewhat heavy to take in.
 
I did like the mutant slang in Origin's Bad Blood, but of course, that game was created back when they created worlds.

A 200 years without any communication bar the occasional trading caravan is enough to get this process well underway, however, I think that once you design a group as having a distict slang, dialect or even language, this serves to emphasize their alienation and difference from other groups in the world, while in Fallout all groups were just that - towns and factions in a Wasteland.

I think that Slags or Vault Citizens would be the first to develop their own dialect thanks to their isolation. The language of the Enclave dwellers could change, unless they had had specific teaching programmes to preserve it (maybe even styling it after colonial American English). As for NCR or other large settlements, I reckon intense trading and exchange would serve to maintain a relatively homogenous language among the locals and their visitors.
 
Well, as it hasn't been a full 400 years yet and not many cultural mixing is going on (as well as plenty of pre-war stuff lying around) I think it's mostly slang and less complex variations of English. I think in places like mainland Europe, with many linguistic differences as it is, it may be a different story, especially considering how close many of the languages are.
 
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