>No dice, Laudre. Not in my book anyway. YOu know what 'Standard' is?
> Plain old Spoken english with a Massachucetts accent. Why? the WDF
>became the standard by which all other armed forces were judged, etc.
>And where did the WDF leadership and its core memebers come from?
>WPI.... QED.

When did the WDF become the galactic government?

Earth is only one world among many in the UFP, and it was a junior member of the United Galactica. (A powerful one, but a young power in the galaxy, even by the time of SotS.) It probably functions something like the UN -- two or three well-established trade languages as the official documentation, and probably a few dozen official languages, if not more. (The UN has about twenty, IIRC. And everything is documented in French and English, being the two most widespread languages among its constituent members.) As an amateur linguist, I'd guess that Galactic Standard is simply one of the languages that became common through trade; humans are relative newcomers on the galactic block, so most likely it'd be something more like a Vulcan or Salusian language -- a far more established one than English would be, on the galactic level. Possibly a creole or pidgin that'd be easier for non-native speakers to learn. WPI being in Massachussetts, though, I'd imagine they'd either speak the current version of American English (which would be much-mutated by 400 years of change), or whatever Earthdome's official language might be (which could easily be Standard, or if Earthdome's strongest constituent power were, say, China, it could be Mandarin...).

-- Sean --

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