Language

From the Encyclopedia Galactica:

Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system.

While Standard Lingo is the "official" language of the Union, each species has one or more 'native' languages that it has taken to the stars.

Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages to occur. Many 'native' languages have evolved so much as to be almost indecipherable between planets, i.e. The 'Italian' spoken by Terrans is almost incomprehensible to Nuevo Romans, and vice versa.

A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The scientific study of language is called linguistics.

