Ka ser jousim: 'Aje waon pojaro espol ka arolan he kef o rai.'
"And they said: 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens.'''
In the early 22nd century, Earth was more or less united in an uneasy coalition of authoritarian governments.
The idea of O'Neill colonies -- space stations capable of holding an entire ecosphere and a population in the ten of thousands, or even in the millions, for the larger concepts -- had been around for more than a century. The idea now seemed feasible: there had been some small scale experiments in orbital manufacturing and asteroid mining.
As difficult as it is, the idea of O'Neill colonies is probably one of the easiest, most sound concepts for space setllement. Colonies could be built close to Earth, and it was less expensive than handling the harsh conditions of Mars, or the Moon. The idea attracted, again the interest of governments, industrialists, religious groups, and people eager to find a way out of increasingly oppressive conditions on Earth.
Of course, that sort of project, utopian, with no concrete hope of return of investment tended to attract utopian-minded people. Would-be colonists were nicknamed "Solarists", a little derisively, for their over-entuthiastic talk of settling the solar system, or possibly for solar power as a solution to energy crisis.
A constructed language for a constructed place.
Aye waon ma eidia jou tai amfuo majadeba waon o erterraes.
"Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
Among Solarists, the commonplace view was that their proposed society should leave behind the evils of terrestrial societies. It was, to be honest, not entirely clear what those evils were supposed to be: the movement included libertarians, socialists, religious people of various faiths, cultists, atheists, entrepreneurs looking for a profit and political dissidents. Various schemes were proposed for governance, most of them unworkable.
It was at this point that an anonymous Solarist, known as the Audimahan released Dimah he-Passol -- 'a language for Solarists'.
The idea, the author argued, was to build a future society with no ties with extant cultures, in particular Western civilization; a new language would provide a new cultural background, free of prejudice, more suited to a new life in the void. Needless to say, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was mentioned.
Native speakers
Eu, tarkel sah ka simah sah.
"Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language."
When the first habitats were actually built, learning Passol was an eccentricity - but it does take a fair dose of eccentricity to go live in a tin can surrounded by void and hard radiation. While the working language aboard the first colony were English, Russian or Mandarin, a few of the settlers knew enough Passol to use it as an interlanguage, and some of the children born there were raised bilingual in Passol. Speakers soon began to enrich the language : it helped that the Audimahan provided means for anyone to create new words, even new roots as needed, and likewise to expand the syntax as needed.
Several factors helped the language gain traction:
- Politics, within the habitat. English was de facto the lingua franca, a fact that came to be resented by Russian, Chinese or Latin American settlers. Passol was one of the ways to sidestep the language question.
- Politics, with respect to Earth. Tensions soon rised between the settlers and their sponsors (government and private companies) back on Earth. Life in the early habitats was hard; surviving required nonstop harsh work in dangerous conditions. Tensions built high between the settlers and Mission Control, which generally made life harder, always demanding more experiments, increased production in the factories. The birth of the first children did not help matters one bit. Increasing hostility towards Earth led to revolt, and a strong sense of 'us', versus 'them' and in this conflict speaking even a few words of broken Passol was a way to reinforce group solidarity.
- Specialized vocabulary. Passol provided vocabulary suitable for life in space in ways Terrestrial language did not, distinguishing, for instance, lillos ('to fall under artificial gravity') from shilos ('to fall under gravity'), or providing short words for complex notions, such as lau ('Coriolis effect') or hushek ('to avoid unwanted precession effects')
- The idea of building a space-borne utopian society, free from Terrestrial evils might have seemed laughable on Earth. After a few years living cooped up in a tiny structure in space, the utopian outlook was one way to stay sane. Outlandish claims were made about Passol: it was said that it eliminated hate speech, or promoted clear thinking. (Claims that the Audimahan him/herself never made such claims about the language he created, though she/he) did make use of unusual features).
