Bubble bubble toil and trouble

Posted on Thu Jul 26th, 2018 @ 3:01am by Lieutenant Anthony Edwards Ph. D & Lieutenant Helena Wells

Mission: Negotiations and Apothecaries
Location: Mess hall
Timeline: MD 14 February 2395 0900

HG was bored and a bored HG was a dangerous HG. She had thought to experiment with other things but then that could be downright dangerous to the ship. She turned her mind to thinking about something a bit less dangerous and was sipping her tea, the biscuit that she had ordered not quite half eaten and now long forgotten.

She ran the simulation she had programmed over and over with different parameters tweaking the math behind the physics a bit each time. It was sort of neat to watch the results.

=^=HG to Edwards, mind joining me in the mess. I have a little present for you.=^=

=^=Be there in a few minutes HG, I like presents.=^= Anthony said closed down the experiment that he was working on and hung up his coverall and left the science lab. He headed directly to the mess with a smile. a few moments later he arrived at the mess deck. "Good Morning HG how are you enjoying your time aboard?"

HG saw Anthony come in and waved. When he got close and asked her she just shrugged. "Well...I have not been shown the airlock yet so I guess that is a good thing. Anyway the reason I called you was I have been a bit bored and got to thinking about languages. I did a bit of research and then got to do some modeling and have something to show you that I thought interesting. Please have a seat."
She waved to one of the chairs. "Go ahead and order something if you want."

Anthony who was thirsty and a little hungry, decided to do just that. He order an ice cold coke and a slice of rich Black Forest cake. It was only a snack time otherwise he might have ordered some enchiladas too. Once the hole in the wall finished creating his snack from the massed protein strings he headed back to The table and handed the second coke to HG as he took the other seat.

"Now then I got to looking at patterns of isoglosses, dialects and how they interact and form. In a region say around a major settlement there is almost always a distinct dialect and that moves outward because people around a major population center interact more with that center, but here at the edges of where two different isoglosses meet things begin to change. Turns out it struck me it is like how bubbles form and merge. Copying causes large dialect regions where one way of speaking dominates. Where dialect regions meet, you get surface tension. Surface tension causes oil and water to separate out into layers, and also causes small bubbles in a bubble bath to merge into bigger ones. The bubbles in the bath are like groups of people -- they merge into the bigger bubbles because they want to fit in with their neighbours. When people speak and listen to each other, they have a tendency to conform to the patterns of speech they hear others using, and therefore align their dialects. Since people typically remain geographically local in their everyday lives, they tend to align with those nearby.

So I used that idea and well here...here is a simulation of how language on Bellatrix four and dialects." The screen showed coloured groups starting near known population centers that were there early and then ran through. "I had to juggle in wars and invasions but they are just sort of like a big bubble moving into a space" The colours moved some expanding, some shrinking, some 'popping' until there were new boundaries. "That matches the current distribution of dialects currently."

Finally HG was talking about something that Anthony had spent his entire life studying. He finally knew exactly what she was talking about and he smiled. He looked over the pad she had shown him. He knew his next state npment was going to be big so had a drink before he teased her by saying “Well the Doctorate of Philosophy in Languages and linguistics just got a lot easier. This is amazing, but let me give you a very quick description of how invasion changes them.” He picked out one of the large cultural and language group. He tapped it twice which made it split in roughly two. He picked a culture that was roughly similar size as one half he drew a line directly from one to the other. “Any group along that line that is smaller than the invaiding force integrates words that allow that invading group to be understood. Now that may take quite some time and if the group is pushing to get to that other cultural group and don’t stick around then those words quickly fall out of use, but continue to be known by the group.” He paused to breath fo a bit. “When the smaller cultural language group comes across people from first culture again they can still be understood. Now wars influences on language is when the invaded group then, if it survives retaliates and follows sometime follows exactly the same path, sometime different, and they influence the local languages along the way and if they are strong enough they influence the original cultural groups language to.” Stopping again for a drink before he continued Edwards said, “Now sometimes both the original and the retaliatory strikes gather extra people and those people learn more of the language and that means if they survive and return home, they will influence others and the language around them changes. I now know you really do have a preponderant interest in linguistics. I hope haven’t distroyed either your work on it or your interest in it. I definitely believe there is more work to do on this and if you would like help, I would love to assist you.”

HG listened and as she did she was already thinking of the math in her head. It was still a physics equation. One in which bubbles popped or reformed and those interactions then spread along. "Not at all, here give me a moment." She took the PaDD and then went into the mathematical code and did some modifications. "There I modified some of the mathematics. I put in some cavitation effect with increased marangoni effect. Give me an real world example and let us see how things match up."

"Well we're on our way to the other end of a real world example of exactly what we're talking about. I think if we head over to see the Captain about it she might even let you work on the hopeful peace accords with me. I am going to be working on the languages and linguistics and I think the Doctor is going to be helping out too from a counsellors point of view. One more working on the Language from a theoretical point of view won't go astray in my books. How about you tidy up the findings so far and we go see the Captain first thing in the morning?" Anthony asked, he did so out of curtesy because as a Civilian scientist he could order her as would be expected in a lab situation but at least by asking she first time around had the right to say no.

"Yes sir," HG nodded. "I will get right on it. It will give me some time to refine the model using some real world data for predictions. Thank you." She nodded.

Anthony smiled and said "I think we this mission could be quite interesting for both of us, you getting your chance to extend your theory, and me in the practical art of negotiation in other languages and learning what is out there.

"Very good sir," HG replied picking up the PaDD. She nodded and headed off.

OFF:

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Civilian HG Wells
Scientist

Lieutenant (jg) Anthony Edwards Ph.D
Chief Science Officer