Alliance Language

The official language of the Alliance bureaucracy and military is Common English, a dialect derived from Standard Interstellar English (which itself can be traced back to roots in Aviation English). Within the Alliance and especially the Five Sectors, where multiple dialects of English exist, it is most often referred to as Common; among non-Alliance civilizations it is almost uniformly known as English. Common English is considered one of the three essential diplomatic languages of the Orion Spur, together with Drakure (the diplomatic language of the Drule Supremacy) and Ak-Kila (the official language of the Vex-Cha Confederacy and its satellites), resulting in its dissemination far beyond the Alliance's boundaries. It is by far the most widespread of the three, largely due to two diplomatic initiatives: the Rosetta Repository and the Parikullax Accord.

The Rosetta Repository Project was established in 2209 under the theory that ease of communication, even with enemies, would be the most critical first step towards peace. The Repository itself is a linguistic database designed for ease of understanding and distribution. Alliance diplomats and scouting units offer it to any civilization they encounter, whether establishing official contact or not.

The Parikullax Accord is a treaty signed in 2268 with a race of merchant-missionaries known as the Bataxi, whose sphere of influence began to overlap with the Alliance in the late 2250s. Due to this overlap, Bataxi found their spaceport temples trafficked in large pluralities by Alliance races. The Accord signaled their official addition of Common English to their standard port signage, which had the side effect of spreading the language to worlds the Alliance had not yet visited.

Outside of official institutions, the languages of the Alliance are as widely varied as one might expect, with all member races retaining their own languages for domestic purposes. Dozens of human languages are considered widespread (defined as over 500 million native speakers) throughout the Five Sectors; many Glis languages are also widely spoken in the Atlantis and Pacifica sectors.

Bii, the language of the Biboh, is an unusual case: few species have sharp enough hearing to distinguish its subtle pitch differentiations, and fewer still have the vocal precision to replicate them. Biboh themselves, though able to rapidly learn and understand new languages, are incapable of producing other sounds. But the same strict uniformity that makes Bii so difficult for other races to speak or understand makes it quite easy for a computer to decipher. Most comm screens and datapads produced by Alliance members have Bii translation suites built in. This, in turn, leads to Bii's use as a common language in many civilian interactions, second only to Common English itself.