star trek & languages

[archersangel]

for some reason this came into my head yesterday, that it would be difficult to communicate on starships.

most ships probably had a dozen species or more & unless everyone knew federation standard (probably english), it would be hard to get anything done. TNG sort of hand-waved this by having the communication pins have a built in universal translator.
what about the civilians on the ship?
or how may times were their communicators removed for various plot reasons?
the novels (or at least one) mentioned that it was a requirement to know at least two languages besides your own (in other word alien languages) to get into starfleet academy. so that would help, if you came across the species connected to the language you learned that is.

and another thing just occurred to me, that they had whole planets speaking the same language. how realistic is that? especially if you compare that to earth with thousands of languages & dialects.

Comments

[conuly]

I mean, they also had entire planets - and all their colony worlds! - sharing the same culture, religion, foodways, afterlife....

(Or, at most, each planet could have two if they were in some way in conflict with each other.)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

It's the last bit that always bothered me most. Why would they do that?

Most ST shows seem to have people speaking "Standard" with the occasional mention dropped in to prove they thought about it. Discovery clearly uses universal translators; in an early episode, they aren't working right on the ship, and Linus is incomprehensible to anyone! But Linus seems to understand everyone else. And it's just played for laughs (as most things with Linus are).