What languages do people learn in schools of your world, if schools exist?
Schools in my world of Beckyland can learn just about any widely spoken language as an optional class, though many choose Korean, Mandarin, sometimes Cantonese, or a Romance language.
Mandatory classes are for Japanese and English, which are incorporated into their studies, and they also speak their native creole of Beckynese.
Man, the idea of optional spoken language classes is dope, I wish I lived in your story haha
In Stargone, the largest single human territorial zone is overseen by the Universal Corporate Council (UCC), which is a loose union of megacorporations who established themselves and their zones within what would become the UCC early in the days of interstellar colonization. Within the UCC, English is the most widespread language and considered the official standard language for communicating with or among the general population. For higher status families in the management class, different corporate zones tend to have distinct upper class languages that are taught in schools in addition to English. In the Fortschrittliche Zukunftslösung (FZ) zone, German is the language of management. In the Chen Zone, a variant of modern Pyojuneo, the South Korean language is taught to the families of management. It is common in all the different corporate zones for those in the shareholding class spend considerable effort to educate their children in the management language of their zone in an effort to appear more high status. For members of the general population, it is normally seen as above their station to display a knowledge of the management language beyond basic slogans or chants.
The independent colonies for the most part speak English, although like all things regarding the colonies there is no complete uniformity. The Liefeld colony for example still speaks English, with classes taught by the I.M.A.G.E. central computer. However despite the computer's ability to teach, the generations of genetic alternation leading to mental degradation has left the Liefeld population loud, rowdy, and while capable of average conversational speech often unable to articulate complex concepts or read at a high level.
The Azonian colony are another exception to the norm, as they learn and speak Portuguese as their primary language, and only learn English in the later years of their educations so that they can communicate with outsiders. This makes them stand out as their English tends to be distinct as they are one of the few populations to learn it as a secondary rather than primary language.
The arweli, the alien race with which humanity has had the most contact, speak and are taught a language that the first humans to interact with them dismissively named "Umwelt". Young arweli are taught by their family pod, and with the addition of some level of genetic memory they tend to pick up on the language very quickly. Before the collapse of the arweli government, young arweli would be sent to large academies to receive formal education that expanded on what their pod had taught them. While other arweli languages are known to exist, Umwelt was the language of the arweli central government and military before it collapsed, making it by far most encountered by humans. Almost no humans are able to to decipher the various calls and croaks. Arweli on the other hand tend to be able to pick up human languages, although without surgical modification they are unable to speak them. After the war ended, it was not uncommon for arweli living in mixed areas with humans to have surgery to implant devices to modify their vocal cords to be able to speak human languages.
English primarily, then we need 2 years of an extra foreign language in order to graduate
I've been like waiting for years for this exact question. My story is about radio astronomers from two different human colonies with very different cultures having a conversation across light years using radio telescopes. Because of cryogenic suspended animation and the vast time scales of interstellar travel and terraforming, one society is a lot like a more technologically advanced modern America while the other has had thousands of years to diverge and their people are genetically altered.
The people on that world speak a conlang I invented derived from modern english. On the other world, the people speak English and the preservation of other languages is relegated to the most dusty and underfunded halls of academia. On the societal (and government) level, they weren't expecting to actually contact anyone else. Partly because their version of fundamentalist Christianity believes Earth was destroyed in the End Times, Jesus himself physically manifested to watch over their ship while they were in cryosleep and they're living in the Promised Land prepared for them by God, so obviously there's no one else out there. It causes a lot of social and political upheaval when they not only contact someone but the people they contact have a much nicer planet and much more peaceful society than they do. So suddenly linguistic anthropologists, of which there are like three, plus a handful of grad students, become very relevant.
“Ya-avi t'hem twir'dat canna-ai rus t'hel nada stairee w'lee pient'r case' stairee aleso twani. W'lee tan nada sheezinee cjhara Aedon tlus eya tani Mairee nada Cycleenvrshi. W'l'tan eh stairee earoo ruso nada Grindos Eieshola uns Lumona Iseleland rusi W'lee'maya prrind-ai construcio eh gronmayo ahrvish morap'tis w'lee tani nada Grinnamada Borte. Y'hem eacko tani makarraka eh AOLA chara extatikt-ai uns. W'lree cannona rus nana faura pleniti orrbeetar o'ro zone', kraka eh twani-ara stairee patreine fauri uns twaki-fanfi cjhara ona zone' rollotacien wai rus u'lwee twiree. W'lee caitnot absierboi eh wryrd yeh'mi spokine', akre W'lree caite' earoo yeh'mi hoomian, sim u'so. Wo lree rorodor vori eh stukio cjhara Preecurosos Iningleeshr-frasta-ai, hwoa caite' huopriri aed u'so unterabsierbo. Pammree poto herlt cannoner. Pammree pata spokala be'e u'so. W'lee deze' ba'e earoor kwari yeh possi ba'e spokeer.”
“Greetings to whomever it was that just contacted us from the star we've designated Home Sun Candidate Number Two. We are the Citizens of Aedon and my name is Mairee the Windfly. I'm a star listener at the Tropical Observatory on Lumona Island where we've just finished building a large radio instrument we call the Bigger Bowl. Your signal is causing a LOT of excitement here right now. We're broadcasting from the fourth planet orbiting our sun, which is in a binary star system 4/25ths of a sun transition away from you. We can't understand a word you're saying, but we can tell you're human, like us. We are sending for a scholar of Ancient English right away who can hopefully help us translate. Please don't stop transmitting. Please keep talking to us. We want to hear what you have to say.”
At Focus, Commonthroat is the most widely spoken language. It is the descendent of the administrative language used by the clergy of the Bright Way during the Age of Decadence, when the clergy ruled the entire system as a cyberpunk-esque megacorp. When the secular governments of the inner planets that would become the Allied Worlds (AW) re-asserted themselves after the War of Dissolution, they chose the already prestigious Commonthroat as a standard language.
As the AW grew from a mere treaty of mutual defense to an ever more economically integrated union, other languages were displaced by Commonthroat. At the time of First Contact there are only three "dialects with an army and navy" as it were. The holy world of Hearthside never joined the AW despite being the innermost planet, so they retain a unique Hearthsider language. The Partisans living in Focus's Kuiper belt, who are the principle reason the inner planets formed the AW in the first place, speak a language called Outlander. The planet Moonlitter (really its many moons) also speak a different dialect of Outlander. Partisan Territory (PT) and Moonlitter are in a relationship analogous to Taiwan and the PRC or North and South Korea.
Outlander is the most vigorous language that isn't Commonthroat, ironically thanks to the hyper-nationalist policies of the Partisan government which prevent the encroachment of AW popular media. Pups on both Hearthside and Moonlitter grow up consuming said AW media, and thus have a decent grasp of Commonthroat. Commonthroat is universally taught as a second language everywhere that isn't PT.
Predating all of these by a hundred millennia is Primordial, the yinrih's written-only language that evolved directly out of a scent-marking behavior. It fills the role of a sacred language in the Bright Way, and is taught in seminaries to aspiring hearthkeepers. Because yinrih evolved writing directly rather than inventing it, they have a written history that extends back to the dawn of sapience.
Meanwhile, the sociolinguistic situation on Earth at the time of First Contact reflects the conditions of today. English reigns as the de facto standard, with other languages like Spanish and Mandarin being regionally important.
Yinrih and humans cannot directly produce one-another's speech sounds. That doesn't stop Terraboos obsessed with human culture from trying though. Ideally, both parties in a conversation speak their own mother tongue (or native throat in the yinrih's case) while the listener passively translates. If one party is monolingual, the bilingual party must use a speech synthesizer to reproduce the other species' language.
Don't have such a concept in my worlds, but I am curious to know why are japanese and english mandatory. Lore time.
Japanese and English were the languages that helped form Beckyland. When the first people came to the discovered land (c. 1940), they were Japanese and English speakers. Neither could understand each other, so a language naturally formed over time with the help of translators.