How would nuclear war affect the development of language

It is important to remember that Languages would change even without the fall of civilisation as we know it. Thus Languages would change at an even faster pace than normally due to the collapse of Governments and an increase of violent societies.

The closest thing to Nuclear war that we know about is the Black Death where the collapse of society created New Languages.

I'm currently watching a TV series, The 100, in which the descendants of the survivors of a nuclear war, who've been living in a space station for nearly a century, come back to Earth and find that the inhabitants of what is now the Washington D.C. area have reverted to a hunter-gatherer level of development, and have developed a language, descended from American English, that is not mutually intelligible with it.

The language's author (the same guy who made Dothraki) said that the language originated as a jargon spoken by the warriors in order to not be understood by their enemies but, I find it very hard to believe that an entire people can be nuked back to the Stone Age and develop a brand new language in barely more than three generations.

It's a good show nonetheless, though; the first season is just decent (it felt too much like a Battlestar Galactica/Lord of the Flies hybrid) but the second and third seasons are the closest thing anyone's ever done to a Fallout TV series. The Battlestar Galactica vibes are coming back though, since Jaha's become the second coming of Gaius Baltar.
 
I look into this languages problem for Senario were 1961 Berlin wall crisis goes nuclear war

While USA escape with little Damage and Washington D.C and New York got hit by Soviet ICBM
is central Europe, USSR and China, japan, Korea got austere nuked by US and USSR forces.

after World War 3 and if nuclear side effects ended not much is left

USSR from 217 million people around 10 million survive shatter over entire former territory
Scandinavia nation fall victim of massive deadly radioactive fallout from west Europe nuclear hits
While west and east Germany is paved with tactical nukes to stop military forces
France got Paris wipe out by several nukes to destroy Nato HQ center around the city
Britain will be hit allot by Soviet to get there Nuclear Bomber and MRBM base
Here the effect would similar to TV movie Threads around 13 millions survivors

In this Scenario who not dies in European battle field or Nuklear strikes try to escape south
After 1962 Millions of refugees are in South France, Spain, Portugal and Italy
That will french, germans, Danes, Belgium and dutch who life in refugee camps or ghettos
biggest problem is communication between local government and Refugees
like German try get job at Italian factory and not understand Italian

here you get a Pidgin (means grammatically simplified language)
that become over long term a Creole language (means a stable natural language based on Pidgin)
so mixture of french, German, Spanish, italian and other languages, similar to city speak of Blade Runner

or that depends how fast Government and order are re establish in Europe
it's realistic that former NATO military gain control over the situation as Pan European Military Dictatorship
Here the Leader(s) could go for drastic way and introduce a language to be learn by all Europeans
This could the language the Dictator speaks or a auxiliary language like Esperanto

while Russian, East european, Scandinavia, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese language got to decline
other will rise locally like Cantonese, Hindu or what Europeans will talk.
but will those replace English as international language ?
I think that USA after WW3 is worldwide consider similar as Germany after WW2
and speaking english is consider a insult or use of English word to express negative thing or insults, like use of "Fallout" or "Yankee".
 

Pesigalam

Banned
The British film Threads portrayed ten years after a full-scale exchange that language had basically collapsed to brief phrases and broken grammar for those born after the war. A couple sentences I remember:

"Ruth. Work."
"Gives it."
"Babby coming."

"Education" was a faded BBC program played on a loop, which I think would be the real determinant for language. Without the resources, effort or expertise to be expended on education, I think things would collapse somewhat quickly as the postwar generation matured.
That's stupid.

In the days before literacy and universal education, did illiterate surfs talked in one-or-two word sentences? No.

So why would people start talking like this 10 years after being nuked?
 
That's stupid.

In the days before literacy and universal education, did illiterate surfs talked in one-or-two word sentences? No.

So why would people start talking like this 10 years after being nuked?

The premise I think was that everyone was too traumatised, numbed and exhausted in general for long conversations. There would certainly be dialect changes I think, expecially between those educated in the old world and the new.
 
I doubt that a nuclear winter would ever come about. Maybe if the woods around a target were especially dry, enough to start continental conflagrations. What I would see is swears based around nukes, as they would possibly be quite the taboo subject.
 
The closest thing to Nuclear war that we know about is the Black Death where the collapse of society created New Languages.

Huh? There wasn't any real branching of languages immediately after the Black Death, at least none that's easy to detect. Languages changed after the demographic collapse, but they were also changing before the collapse.
 
Huh? There wasn't any real branching of languages immediately after the Black Death, at least none that's easy to detect. Languages changed after the demographic collapse, but they were also changing before the collapse.

I meant that it sped up the Development of Languages. Due to the collapse of society there were fewer People that could rally against the New Developments as well that the massive amount of depopulation lead to more isolated villages.
 
Chinese languages in other parts of China that aren't strategically important would probably flourish, and Tibetan would definitely be one of those. Maybe a revival of the near-extinct Macanese
As for Chinese, I'd say there would be a revival of the Min South and Cantonese Languages, since places speaking Mandirin would more likely be nuked. But considering how dominant mandirin really is, it'd still be a main language in the North, would be the main language locals of different areas will use to communicate with each other.
 
I meant that it sped up the Development of Languages. Due to the collapse of society there were fewer People that could rally against the New Developments as well that the massive amount of depopulation lead to more isolated villages.

I don't think any sentence of your comment is correct.

1. Entire regions were abandoned after the Black Death; the remaining populated areas may not have been any more isolated.

2. Isolated villages are actually loci of linguistic conservatism. This is why Icelandic is so similar to Old Norse. The reason is that those villages are never completely isolated: there is usually just enough contact that they can't diverge linguistically too much, and conversely life is sufficiently static that there's no real reason to change how people speak. The main locus of language change is the cities, and those shrank after the Black Death.

3. Evidently, languages did not change more rapidly in the 150 years of depopulation, between 1350 and 1500, than they did before or after. In English, the biggest changes occurred between 1000 and 1150 (starting well before the Norman invasion) and between 1450 and 1650; the high population density in late-16c England did not hinder the resolution of the Great Vowel Shift.
 

Pesigalam

Banned
I doubt that a nuclear winter would ever come about. Maybe if the woods around a target were especially dry, enough to start continental conflagrations.
IIRC nuclear winters are thought to occur because of dust-particles kicked into the atmosphere by all the nukes going off. Closest analogy would be volcanic eruptions, which are known to impact the climate.
 
IIRC nuclear winters are thought to occur because of dust-particles kicked into the atmosphere by all the nukes going off. Closest analogy would be volcanic eruptions, which are known to impact the climate.

The general theory is that it wouldn't have been as bad as everyone assumed at the time, IIRC.
 
3. Evidently, languages did not change more rapidly in the 150 years of depopulation, between 1350 and 1500, than they did before or after. In English, the biggest changes occurred between 1000 and 1150 (starting well before the Norman invasion) and between 1450 and 1650; the high population density in late-16c England did not hinder the resolution of the Great Vowel Shift.[/QUOTE]

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May I suggest that the English language started changing around 1,000 AD because that is when Vikings started immigrating to the British Isles around 1,000 AD?
The Battle of Hastings (1066) was merely the latest step in Vikings seizing control of the British Isles. The Danelaw already controlled much of the east coast of the British Isles before 1066. William the Conqueror was a Norman (er ... Norse Man) who came from Normandy, a region only recently (maybe 150 years earlier) by Vikings (Norwegians).
 
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