Thoughts about languages in Equestria and intercommunication (long post) · 6:22pm Aug 16th, 2016
(i.e. a ramble about linguistics and, to some extent, 'headcanon', although this was really meant to be a "What do you think?" post, assuming that after reading this wall of text, someone might actually want to reply :/)
I had a passing thought regarding languages in Equestria and wanted to know others' opinions on this. Equestria (and the entire planet) are very diverse as far as sapient creatures and even within equine cultures, so I can only imagine there being a wealth of different languages that everyone would speak in, although it appears that there is at least a common pony language (official language of Equestria?) that most others seem to know, including (but not limited to) buffalo, zebras (Zecora), minotaurs (Iron Will), dragons, and yaks (though they seem to speak in simple sentences and with bad grammar, as depicted in the series, implying they don't know it very well).
What confuses me, however, is how the crystal ponies, after being sealed for a thousand years and suddenly returning, are able to communicate just fine with the other ponies of Equestria (unless Twilight and company were speaking to them in fluent "Crystal Ponyish" (I can't imagine that after just a few days of study that they would all be fluent). Another possibility is that the crystal pony language is an older variant of the common pony language and has remained largely unchanged over 1000 years (though considering this possibility, one wonders why they don't speak in archaisms like Luna had in Luna Eclipsed, which could then be attributed to an oversight on the part of the script writers).I could go on about this with other characters/groups but I don't think that's necessary. >.< But it does seem like things change more slowly over time, in Equestria and among ponies at least (this seems to hold for lifespans as well).
Now the question comes to this...what about the English letters/Latin characters on some things? I want to say that's just the animators putting in English and English-y letters to make things look like believable text to an English-speaking audience, though if you want to go back to G1 when there were humans, you could perhaps say that ponies borrowed a lot of culture, language, and technology from humans...although why would the humans (formerly?) in the pony world just so happen to have what appears to be Latin-based characters themselves? I suppose that could point to all the fan theories that pony-Earth either is this Earth (often post-apocalyptic) or that it's a parallel world...though I find both unlikely (but this is just how I feel). Some believe that ponies do, in fact, speak English...although that feels like an idea centring around English as a norm and disregarding pony history and linguistics, among other factors. I would go as far as to say that even if they did speak something like English, that because of their physical form, the language would probably have been modified to be easier for a pony vocal tract to speak.
So...back to what my thought originally was about...I have thought about writing a human in Equestria fiction or two (would have to look at my ideas list), and pondered this - If a human (from any given place or background) were to arrive in Equestria somehow, in light of the above, wouldn't they be unable to understand or speak to ponies? I'm interested to try writing one with a language barrier being one of the conflicts, at least for some time (being immersed in an unfamiliar language usually leads to learning it fairly quickly). I would even think that if a human was turned into a pony, that they wouldn't immediately be able to understand and speak with other ponies either (just as being born of Chinese heritage, for example, doesn't necessarily mean that you know Chinese)...except perhaps in the case of something like Dash of Humanity (?) (I haven't read it ^^; ), in which the main character's consciousness was sharing a head with Rainbow Dash. Having access to the knowledge and mental skills (including language) of your headmate/host probably facilitates learning a language pretty quickly or even being able to use it almost instantly :P
As for No One Weeps Alone, Summer and Amelí are able to communicate because of their linked journals, which translates their text through the same magic that connects them between worlds...though I was considering having them test this and see if they could pass their writing to each other un-translated.
If anyone is curious about the characters/glyphs on Summer's journal that I put in the cover picture, they don't hold any specific significance. I did, however, while coming up with them and writing them out, have a basic idea of what some of the characters' sound values were and basic rules regarding what consonants and vowels could go together meaningfully (just wait, and I'll have a full language ready...though I was working on one before and lost motivation...)
No One Weeps Alone -should- be updated soon...but we'll see, since I'm trying to balance a few other things with time that it seems like I need more of. :/ But I will try to finish this story before starting others, so I don't leave several unfinished stories.
Anyway, my ramble is now over, I think. 
I'm sure I went too far into this, but being a linguistics and language enthusiast, I do tend to think about these things in depth.
What are your thoughts?
Tesh just shush you have too many random thoughts no one cares about and it's not like anyone will see anyway also change that horrid profile picture okay bye
Hmm, I'll have to look into this, and give it a lot of thought.
4153276 Ooh, thank you, Wrought-Irom. I was hesitant for...4 days maybe about posting this because I thought no one would look at, let alone reply to this...since I hardly have any followers, and walls of text and rambling about topics people may not know or care about can scare them off :/
It means a lot to me that you're interested and thinking about it :) (I kind of had a feeling you would reply :P) But yes, I would love to hear your thoughts!