Community Event / Creation painting the background of the future

[Cmdr Andy B]

think they'd use 'self-heating-container', I'm almost 100% certain. But then they have that kind of bolt-on linguistic tradition.

In a country that call's a mobile phone a 'handy' yes but your comment brings to mind a very interesting point:

As writers it would be very narrow focused and arrogant to make the whole future very wasplike in nature, if/when we do finally start colonizing the galaxy i would expect to discover a planet named New Germany or New Paris or even New Iraq

so in drawing inspiration from these languages we broaden the scope of varience of the outcome and we can even use it to tip the hat to those languages, eg we may refer to a personal communicator as 'a Handy'

 

[jptreen]

i get where your coming from with cut and paste but nobody drives around in a large four wheel drive car they jump in the SUV and nobody goes to the local pub for a flagon of ale, they drink it from a glass and if they asked for a flagon of whatever is on tap the 18 year old barman would stare at the with a blank look.

things Do change over time and although we cut and paste into a notepad on our desktop the isn't a pot of glue in site and most kids have never heard of a scrap book

it may be in the future that every day items we don't consider will change so much as to require a new name to be adopted, after all how many people used to call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover and how many now call everything that spins as it sucks a Dyson and everything that washes as it sucks a VAX?


Also details set the date, if i describe the cobra and its equipment based on the space shuttle people will read it and think its some ship designed by an 80's revivalist

Ah - I missed this! I'm not sure we are going to get to an agreement on this. We must live in very different linguistic worlds.

I doubt many people ever ever asked for "a flagon of ale", tbh. No-one I know asks for a glass of beer, they ask for a pint, or just a beer (or even an 'Ale'), but most probably for a 'Bombardier' or an 'IPA', or something.

I've never really heard the term 'SUV' used interchangeably with 'Four wheel drive' in conversation. I mostly hear 'Landie' or 'Land Cruiser' or 'Series III'.

This leads me to a point, actually. The examples you are using, and the ones above that I'm using are pretty much all brand names. These will and do change over time. A different tranche of words (more general ones) that seem not to. I would say that these include 'mug', 'book', 'ship', 'station', or 'shop'.

Interesting to think about, anyway.

 

[jptreen]

In a country that call's a mobile phone a 'handy' yes but your comment brings to mind a very interesting point:

As writers it would be very narrow focused and arrogant to make the whole future very wasplike in nature, if/when we do finally start colonizing the galaxy i would expect to discover a planet named New Germany or New Paris or even New Iraq

so in drawing inspiration from these languages we broaden the scope of variance of the outcome and we can even use it to tip the hat to those languages, eg we may refer to a personal communicator as 'a Handy'

All I can say is 'yes'. I personally hate it when the future is American or British, or even Chinese.

There was a BBC show that was on a while ago about escape to a new planet where everyone was British save for one evil American. What bugged me was that there were things they could have done to justify that but they didn't even bother. Sci Fi can be so culturally imperialistic at times, when it's way more interesting for it not to be.