Hi, I wish you a speedy recovery! Hopefully you're leg is healing well and you're not getting cabin fever!
I'm absolutely obsessed with DLB, and I've been wondering if you have any headcanons about languages in the DLB universe.
Have most species that are physically able to just switched to basic completely? Or is there, for example, a language native to Naboo that is still in use? If yes, did Leia learn it at some point after becoming a citizen of Naboo? Or maybe she learned some before (maybe because of Pooja being her friend) and has been listening in on conversations that people think she doesn't understand since day 1?
Also, is there an Alderaanian language? Cause that could be really interesting if someone picks up on her being able to understand it.
I would love to hear any thoughts you have on this!
Oh man.
So, I feel like asserting there are specific language headcanons in the DLB universe would be a little disingenuous, because it has not played a part in the story.
HOWEVER!!!
My feelings about language in the SW universe more broadly is absolutely that there should be dozens if not hundreds of planetary specific languages for each planet, and Basic is specifically for people who intend to do interstellar work.
Look, realistically, the GFFA is so, so so huge. Our own planet is home to hundreds of languages and dialects, there is no reason these other planets wouldn't have plenty of their own to go around. If I were to rewrite this series (lol, no) language and culture would probably get an upgrade, specifically the diversity of these things. That would be high on the list, next to dealing more with PR, and maaaaaaybe lengthening the timeline? Just to make things fit more realistically? Oof, I cannot write this story again. Just imagining this is breaking my brain.
Anyway, a more robust Naboo culture would have several languages (at least two gungan specific ones, but probably three), and as for Leia...she might choose to learn one or two if she knew a specific handmaiden spoke it. Or that Padmé did. What Leia is probably best at though is dialects of Basic and adapting to various local pidgin communications, from all the traveling she would have had to do in the Rebellion. And she understands languages better than she speaks them, because she can understand intent in the Force. Which is not the same as learning vocabulary or grammar.
there is no reason these other planets wouldn't have plenty of their own to go around.
Just as an in universe explanation for why this is less the case than could reasonably be expected, Regular Interstellar travel has been common place in universe for somewhere on the order of 15-20 thousand years, however most human or near human worlds were colonised in waves over the last few thousand years, Most of the colonisation efforts were conducted either by communities on specific planets that would reasonably have all spoken the same language, or by multi-planetary corporations and thus everyone would be primarily using Basic. This is also why most planets in the GFFA have lower populations than even modern day earth, when people start feeling like there's not enough space they tend to settle on a new world instead. Ecumenopoli like Coruscant are the exception, not the rule. In fact we see often that in the mid and outer rim, most communities are only the size of small towns to mid size cities, and many planets will only have one or two cities with a collection of smaller communities around them. Hell, Alderann, a core world and founding member of the Republic, only had a population of roughly 4 billion. Its also why so many worlds seem to only have a single biome, for a lot of them, its just that biome is the only place that anyone bothered to settle.
Then there's all of the times various species got shuffled from planet to planet in pre-history by ancient Empires like the Rakatan, who would absolutely have forced their slaves to all speak a single language, and thus left populations of several different species who all had roughly the same language scattered across the galaxy. There would have been divergence in the time between the fall of the Rakatan Infinite Empire and the development of non force-powered hyperdrives by the other species, but they still have a common root language in the recent-ish past.
Naboo as an example was colonised around 4000 years before canon, by a single group of people, so any languages that have developed in that time would have a) come from a single common ancestor + basic or just basic itself and b) would have been pressured by the fact that long distance instant communication means that geographically distant groups wont necessarily have diverging language. British, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand English may all have diviged slightly, but they are all very much the same languages, and a lot of the structural divergences occurred before the age of global telecommunications. Then most of the rest of the worlds in the surrounding Chommell sector were also colonised by people from Naboo, meaning that they would have all spoken a Naboo dialect, and were all in close contact with Naboo, due to Naboo's position as the sector capital and the seat of the Senator for the sector.
Which brings in another factor for why there would be less circumstances for language to diverge as far as it might do, The fact that most of the galaxy is living under a single government that seems to primarily use Basic in its bureaucracy, its not just the language of interstellar trade, its also the language that any interstellar laws would be written in.
The Gungans however are native to Naboo, so them having hundreds of tribal languages would be completely reasonable and expected, although the fact that they seem to be all living under a single government now may imply that many of their historic languages could have faded as the various tribes were unified.
