308
Non-smart smart move
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
308 points (100.0% liked)
History Memes
2656 readers
976 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Piefed.social rules.
-
History referenced must be 20+ years old.
-
Avoid posting AI-generated content whenever possible.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:
- !historyruins@piefed.social
- !historyart@piefed.social
- !historyartifacts@piefed.social
- !historyphotos@piefed.social
- !askhistorians@piefed.social
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I agree but i think we also need to accept that the majority of humans live in asia and should have their own influence on the language, rather than trying to keep it from changing by associating it to specific countries where it's native.
If "international english" turns into a creole of basically every major language, and everyone makes an effort to learn or at least become familiar with languages unrelated to their native one; then it becomes vastly more fair and useful as a lingua franca.
Pardon my wall of text:
I'm blowing smoke on this topic based on dnd terms. Common tongue is English because more people speak that already. Whatever people do to it after, they do to it after, but English as a starting point removes the need for more people to learn Esperanto or whatever other language wants to be "common."
In the fantasy I've created in my head/my hot take: it would be easier if people shifted to English as common, and had "secondary" languages based on their location.
(In the real world, even sign language isn't universal. Certain languages like German apparently also do better for certain things like written law. I realize it's silly to expect our species to choose a common language based on numbers alone. I think more people speak English specifically because English speaking countries hold more sway on international economics/warfare (for now), and other countries have responded in kind.)
In my setting I use Esperanto as an ancient common tongue and English as a modern one. That's because it's ridiculously easy to construct false etymologies to explain various features of the English language if you use Esperanto as a base.
Esperanto words also have somewhat guessable meanings if you know your Latin and Greek roots, even though the text is not comprehensible generally. So players can have hints at the meaning of a text without knowing what it really says.
When I need to obscure the meaning more, I mix up the words in a sentence. Because Esperanto has an accusative case, you can mix up the sentence order without loss of meaning. But it makes the sentence harder to read and obscures the relationship between the words.
Also, it sounds like an incomprehensible but distinctly European language when spoken. Players tell me it sounds like Spanish.