This might come up again, but I thought I needed to give some simple explanation for Grace. I'm intending here that by the end of the separation, Tabitha will be able to understand her.
I probably could have spent pages and pages on this, but considering she's a side-character I wasn't sure how much time I should spend on something I could explain on one page.
That's a really neat "idealistic but unethical villain plot" there. I'm reminded a little of the JLA "Tower of Babel" story arc from the 90s, but in that one Ras al Ghul was trying to make all communication impossible rather than forcibly creating a universal language.
Did it only affect speech? I guess it would have to be limited, if it eliminated comprehension of existing written languages civilization would have collapsed if he'd pulled it off and he probably wasn't that short-sighted.
Is Grace able to understand (but not speak) other languages because she's second-generation, or is that true of all Cryptics? Would folks have remembered older languages but been unable to re-learn how to speak them? Are all Cryptics monolingual speakers but capable of reading and writing in other languages they know one way or the other?
See, you give an answer and it provokes mmore questions. :)
Well, it looks like that guy still won - the Cryptics clearly aren't letting the language barrier stopping them from living their lives the way they want to, and that includes having children, who will also be Cryptics, which will quite probably eventually end up including a wide enough range of people that those that aren't Cryptics will probably end up learning Crypticese, and eventually it'll probably get to the point where nobody knows if everyone's speaking Crypticese because that's what everyone's speaking, or because that's the only thing anyone can speak.
This is one of those things that seems really positive to start with, but once you get into the details it's impossible to do it in a way that actually winds up beneficial. There's plenty of evidence that suggests our language helps shape thinking and even perception, and thus having many languages in the world helps us think in more ways.
But perhaps a sufficiently robust language would contain all the possible ways of thinking... However, a person couldn't come up with such a robust language.
As for what it affects, I imagine it would have to affect ability to write but not read otherwise it would significantly fail the goal. More interestingly, the language would have to be fixed - this is the only logical means of preventing people from simply re-learning how to speak old languages, if they cannot use words that are not part of the new language corpus that has been put into their mind. Which would make language completely static.
Again, theoretically good - in ten thousand years you could pick up a book and read it perfectly fine - but fails in that it cannot express concepts that didn't exist at the time of its creation. Just as a person couldn't come up with a sufficiently robust language, no person could possibly foresee every future development and include words for them, so the inability to come up with new words would then result in an increasing inability to communicate about concepts discovered or developed after the creation of the language.
Personally, I'd have let him do that. Everyone speaking the same language means no more dubbed movies where the lips don't match the words being spoken. Also means I don't have to worry about going to a foreign nation and being unable to understand the locals. Lots to be gained by everyone speaking the same language. It also would make negotiations between nations a lot smoother since you can be sure that what you are saying is what they are hearing instead of being lost in translation. You can bet the tourism between nations would skyrocket since people wouldn't have to worry about studying the language before leaving...customs yes but language would no longer be an issue. Can't really see any downsides to everyone speaking the same language other than for military purposes and their coded messages.
Did it only affect speech? I guess it would have to be limited, if it eliminated comprehension of existing written languages civilization would have collapsed if he'd pulled it off and he probably wasn't that short-sighted.
Is Grace able to understand (but not speak) other languages because she's second-generation, or is that true of all Cryptics? Would folks have remembered older languages but been unable to re-learn how to speak them? Are all Cryptics monolingual speakers but capable of reading and writing in other languages they know one way or the other?
See, you give an answer and it provokes mmore questions. :)
But perhaps a sufficiently robust language would contain all the possible ways of thinking... However, a person couldn't come up with such a robust language.
As for what it affects, I imagine it would have to affect ability to write but not read otherwise it would significantly fail the goal. More interestingly, the language would have to be fixed - this is the only logical means of preventing people from simply re-learning how to speak old languages, if they cannot use words that are not part of the new language corpus that has been put into their mind. Which would make language completely static.
Again, theoretically good - in ten thousand years you could pick up a book and read it perfectly fine - but fails in that it cannot express concepts that didn't exist at the time of its creation. Just as a person couldn't come up with a sufficiently robust language, no person could possibly foresee every future development and include words for them, so the inability to come up with new words would then result in an increasing inability to communicate about concepts discovered or developed after the creation of the language.