linguistically, probably a very realistic approach. Again - I'm convinced that the language of interstellar civilization will probably be dominated by the first to get there - witness the popularity of Spanish and Portugese in the New World. But I wouldn't discount the power of an ambitious johnny-come-lately either (he said in somewhat bastardized British).Originally posted by Madarin Dude:
In my traveller universe the solimani use pictograms and speak a cobination of Chinese with some English and Japanese words thrown in for good measure. The latin alphabit is used often but the pictograms remain.
I do think that some form of constructive writing system (like the latin alphabet) is eventually going to displace the ideographic systems (like Chinese) through sheer force of simplicity and flexability - in much the same way that the Arabic number system has pushed out the Roman in all but the most formalized usage. Spelling vagriencies aside - it's just much easier to learn and use some 26 characters to construct words than to learn several hundred unique pictographs.
In the OTU this probably would lead to the adoption of the Vilani alphabet as a palatable comprimise.
One of the things I thought was cool about Firefly was the way they snuck the Mandarin in here and there... and the more industrial settings were notably 'Asian-ised.'
I've always enjoyed Western Science Fiction that is smart enough to realize that Western Europeans are not the only players in the game.
Hmmmm... you're probably right on the Asian features - genetics being what it is and the numbers being what they are. We may yet see the complete extinction of non-brown eyes in the human population... long after I'm gone. But I doubt it will be that difficult to distinguish between *any* of the various major and minor human races - the genetic drift and evolutionary pressures will be much greater for populations that have been completely isolated in a different bioshpere for a hundred thousand plus years than any differences we've cooked up on Terra lately.
Asian features are proof of solomani origin. The Vilani do't have that race and neither do the Zhodani.
The distictions will be obvious.
Just my cr0.02 - your milage (kilometrage?) may, and should, vary.
--michael