More Simon / Iron Lung Language, Handwriting Worldbuilding Ideas, Bloodymary Dynamics
This is not an exclusively bloodymary post, I just like using Grace as a fallback character for comparing to modern human standardization. THAT BEING SAID please feel free to use this for cool crossover and/or bloodymary ideas. I also know I'm diverging from movie canon because they do actively write and speak in modern English. But I just have a thing for making my sci-fi worlds more alien!
Simon in my extended universe project speaks verbal shorthand (aka, an evolved form of far-future English, with direct influence from extended space living). This was inspired by time period differences I discussed earlier between Grace and Simon, and how Grace would have sounded entirely archaic to Simon.
They can understand each other if they try hard enough. Grace would be using an incredibly inefficient and slower version of English from Simon's perspective, so he'd really have to pick out the meaning through a lot of filler words that were cut out a hundred years ago.
Meanwhile Simon is very confidently speaking like he had a stroke from Grace's perspective. It's almost English, but there's word salad happening, plus a LOT of contractions / omissions that have been standardized, and Grace would have to extrapolate a lot.
To Simon, it is English; it's a Martian creole of it that got twisted around an Eden localization, though. Simon also writes exclusively in shorthand, which I also think has ended up becoming it's own localized thing on Eden, meanwhile the COI has adopted a much flatter visual version of it.
I came to this conclusion from the prospect of paper being a nigh-impossible resource, and screens/typing being much more of a common thing. Handwriting is a dying art entirely, and I think that they would have reverted back to cross-writing to save space on whatever paper they had left. It's a finite resource so they would have had to get creative right quick.
They could possibly also synthesize fresh paper from scrap papers, but you cannot produce more than what you already have, so it would be an endless cycle of paper slowly reducing in quality with each re-use. They'd also need mesh screens to do it and it would take up water.
This is also why I believe Eden specifically started reverting back to old letters like the thorn (the COI has not caught up to doing this yet). They adopted any character that could shorten the amount of letters they'd need to use total.
Standard Latin letters (the kind we use today in order to write and read) are still very common digitally, it's just dead in handwriting form, IMO. They still use standard keyboards inputs, and still type in a way that looks closer to 2000s English. They don't have to worry about saving space on a screen.
Grace: Can you understand me? Do you speak English?
Simon: Uh, yeah, oi dock ȝu, spæk Anglis... ƿy r'ȝu talk? (Uh, yeah, I understand you and speak English... why are you talking like that?)
Grace: 'Why am I talk'?
Simon: ȝu spæk as'n old? D'fuck? (Your speech is old. What the fuck?)
Grace: Oh, 'why do I speak Old English'? Is that right?
Simon: Oi serious grave, r'ȝu ill? Sick-tu? (I'm really serious, are you ill? You sick?)
Grace, realizing: This is going to sound really weird, but can you do a silly accent?
Simon: Huh?
Grace: Like a poetry reading. Like Edgar Allan Poe.
Simon: ƿu is þat? Moi N.O. poetry ƿel grave. (Who is that? I don't know poetry very well.)
Grace: Just try.
. . .
Simon, in a mocking tone: Oh, look at me walk-ing on dirt-ground! I drive a 'car' on a 'road' on my way to the 'grocery store'. Boy, I can't wait to use my 'credit score' to buy a 'house'!
Grace, excited: See, that's perfect. That works!
Simon, who was clearly referencing things that no longer exist to spite him: I hate you.
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