New CBB

Is it possible for a country to promote an "Official" dialect without being a 1984-esque control freak?

Pazmat's government officially promotes the use of the Western Plainlands Carsza dialect--all people living in Pazmat are required to learn it, and it's flat-out treated as a seperate language. This is neccessary because Pazmat basically has a Chinese-esque situation; its "dialects" are simply flat-out mutually unintelligeble languages. Without promoting the Carsza dialect, any single Paz would be incapable of communicating with 95% of his fellow countrymen.

The Government does not ban other dialects. You are free to speak your own with others who know it--you merely learn Carsza so if you travel to some other Pazmat state 3000 miles away, you can communicate with others without difficulty.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

If they're mutually unintelligible, then that's not even weird.

Good, because it seems that attempts to enforce a language in real life tend to go...awry.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

...and with 99.9% of foreigners. So?

_________________
(native)
(learning)

--
Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

Actually, given how Techaria (Pazmat's planet) has around 8 billion people on it, and 2.0 billion people who know Pazmat as a second language (it's a lingua franca), a Paz would be able to communicate with roughly 30% of the people on his planet (not counting the 1.5 billion people who have Pazmat as their L1).

Also, if nobody in your country can communicate with each other, you're an incompetent government.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

Do what? Language communicability should be imposed by law? And how would there even be a government if ""NOBODY"" can communicate? What are trying to say?

What I meant was, if there isn't an official dialect in this kind of situation, how are the hundreds of various officials from around the whole country going to communicate if everyone of them speaks a mutually unintelligible dialect/language?

Normally, there's need to impose language communicabilty, but when your country has over 10 different language families and over 400 different languages, and you can travel for 2 hours and have no clue how to talk to anybody, it's kinda neccessary.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

You live in a good example. Just sayin'.

Yes, but most of them communicate in a Lingua Franca; which is the exact same situation in Pazmat--one dialect is denoted the official Lingua Franca of the country.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

OK, I answered your question, do you understand that there does not need to be an OFFICIAL language and that even in a nation that has multiple languages (some of which are mutually unintelligible) can still conduct business?

Yes. I guess the term "Official Language" was a bad idea. The Government doesn't ban everything except Carsza, it's merely what all official documents are written in.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

Like constitutions and such?

Yes.

However, since Carsza is taught to everybody as a mandatory part of schooling (which is also mandatory), most media in Pazmat is made in Carsza anyway.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

So you write like this;

"The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States." ?

I have no idea what you're trying to ask me.

_________________
Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

He's needling you about people speaking Spanish in the USA again.

_________________
"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

= | = | =

Do you think that the language of the "official documents" is static and immutable?


Not exactly.

EU.
The official documents are translated to each of the official languages (they're about 20 or more).

_________________
(native)
(learning)

--
Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

Yes, thank you. Wonderful example.

I did some searches, and came up dry, but I thought I should ask as a quick question before I started a new thread:

Has anybody already written up about a water world? I mean, a planet with no fixed land masses, only floating/swampy islands. My inspiration is Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and Isaac Asimov:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_fiction#Swamp
I hadn't really thought about species other than humans, but I wanted to check before I spewed forth my thoughts.

_________________
Native: from +
Learned:
Read:
Exposure:
: I'm sketching "A Brief History of Proto-Polynesian-Hebrew"
and Parseltongue