A Language Is Forever

Tick tock, tick tock, goes the clock as all the students are deeply engrossed in their work
in Library Pod B-044, while the mini wiper bots are frantically trying to clean up the
massive dust storm that encircled them on Mars. In 2166, life is hard on Mars for students
because loud noises and dusty environments were not the ideal studying conditions. Most
of the parents on Mars are middle class miners, who cannot afford to send their children
to Earth for further studies without full scholarships. As the resources on Earth started
dwindling, Mars was mostly used as a mining planet by humans due to its rich resources
such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen.
Yosana, a 17 year old, who dreamed of becoming a linguist by joining a university on
Earth one day, was intensely engaged in a recent news article by the Worlds Words
Newspaper. She gestured PLAY on her multi functional DigiTab, and the news
broadcast was sent to her optic nerves.
Breaking News, France, a shocking discovery has been made! A team of 16
international linguists have discovered an almost extinct language, Araki, a language
spoken in the 21st century by the Vapa tribe in Vanuatu, in which the speakers stress the
syllables.
Yosana quickly gestured RESEARCH and her DigiTab quickly showed all the
universities which researched in extinct and critically endangered languages and their
distance from her home pod on Mars. She quickly short listed the universities that
provided full scholarships for linguistic studies and applied to them using her Universal
Profile on her DigiTab.
Yosana got into her self-driving solar car and sensing her neurons, it started driving home
and playing her favorite old song, Mother Nature Son, by the Beatles in a soft tone. As
she entered home, she saw the LED walls showing pictures of Paris and France. The
main wall read, Congratulations to Yosana for getting selected to Paris Sorbonne
University in France! Her elated mother announced that she was selected for interview
with free travel.
Free travel is only valid on Subluminous flights, which travel only at 1/100 speed of light
and take almost 22 hours to reach the Earth. Yosana dreamed of traveling on the
Superluminous flight which is very expensive and can travel faster than light and reach
Earth from Mars in less than 12 minutes. Yosana set her destination on the DigiTab,
which quickly made reservations for a travel pod to pick her up from her home to Valles
Marineris Interplanetary Port, a Subluminous flight SL902 to Charles De Gaulle Port in
Paris, and a Solar train to the University.
As she walked into the Interplanetary Port, an electronic scanner scanned her body and
luggage and displayed:
Yosana Griffiths. Age 17. Healthy. No Prohibited Items.

*****
As Yosana walked into Room F937, she quickly glanced at the display which read:
Joshua Strandler: Age 41
Profession: College Interviewer
Josh rose from the interview chair and said in an American accent, Hi, you must be
Yosana. Its nice to meet you, Im Josh Strandler, your college interviewer. How are you
today?
Hello, Josh. Im fine, thank you. How are you?
Im good, thank you. Please take a seat.
Josh quickly glanced at his interviewees information on his watch.
Name: Yosana Emila Griffiths
Age: 17, Multi Lingual
Hometown: Valles Marineris, Planet Mars
Interests: Morphology, Sociolinguistics
Future Profession: Disappearing Language Linguist
Josh said, So Yosana, on your biographical record, it says your hometown is planet
Mars. Why did you decide to move to the Earth?
A few generations ago, my family used to live on the earth in Vanuatu. My great
grandmother was an Ayurvedic doctor, and my great grandfather was a construction
worker. Due to the tremendous amount of global warming, many of the islands on Earth
including Vanuatu, Iceland, Great Britain, and Australia were threatened with rising sea
levels and were presumed to go underwater by the end of the 21st century. So, they had to
migrate to some other nation for livelihood. However, many nations were not ready to
accept so many migrants, as their own coastal cities were inundated with sea water and
became unlivable. So my great grandparents decided to move to another planet. But, they
were not very rich and could not afford space travel.
At that time, private companies like SpaceD and Urgent Galactic were looking for
workers to extract the resources from Mars as the resources on Earth were getting
depleted at rapid scale. So, the SpaceD Mining Company made a deal with my great
grandfather. If he would work for them, they would pay for all the space travel and our
home pod. So he took up that offer, and soon enough, they started to live on Mars and the
next generations followed in the same profession.
Did you like it there? asked Josh.

I had good friends, but the environment wasnt suitable for my dreams of becoming a
linguist. I wanted to study in a nice, clean, quiet place. I researched and found out that the
earth only has 6 more common languages left out of more than 6,500 languages in 2015!
I also found out that universities were offering scholarships to people who are aspiring
linguists and are fluent in at least one disappearing language.
Have you in any way helped the community in the issue of disappearing languages?
Yes. For my most recent science fair project, I created a prototype for the Linguist 2.0.
Basically, it is a simple tiny device attached to a pair of headphones, and it translates
from one language into the other using sound waves. For example if you speak English, I
can hear you by wearing headphones in my mother tongue, Araki, or any other language
for which translations are already available. Linguist 2.0 automatically detects and stores
words in different dialects which are correctly understood between two speakers of
different languages based on their vocal tract movements. This lexicon has more than 80
billion entries already.
Josh was truly fascinated after Yosana fluently gave him a step by step tutorial on how
her tools work and began to speak. Many of the ancient books and scripts written in
various dying languages, such as Sanskrit, and their dialects have many solutions for
even current world problems and also ideas for new innovations. However, since many of
these languages were not spoken widely, and employment opportunities were less for
these language speakers, many of these languages disappeared in the 21st century. So a
couple of months ago, UNESCO adapted a law to encourage language revitalization. It
has been a true struggle to preserve indigenous languages that are slowly becoming
extinct. The application team and I will definitely look into this closer, and will let you
know. Thank you, Yosana.
*****
After thanking Josh, Yosana walked into Room G196 and glanced at the display which
read:
Mrs. Kerry French: Age 52
Profession: Financial Aid Counselor
Yosana? asked Mrs. French.
Yes. I came to talk to you about the financial aid process, replied Yosana.
I looked at your testing scores. All perfect scores, correct?
Yes.
Everyone who comes to me gets perfect scores on all their tests. Only one out of the
54,764 students applying for financial aid will receive a full scholarship including travel

expenses. Tell me something spectacular about yourself, and we can put you into
consideration.
Well, I did some research about your university. Paris University has been collecting
books written in Araki dating back to the 1600s by spending a lot of money, since these
books contain lot of information about the cures for many terminal illnesses. However,
there are no longer any people living on Earth who can read or speak this language after
Vanuatu got submerged under water and everyone migrated to different parts of universe.
In my research, I learned that I was only one of the five people in the universe who know
this language.
Fascinating, but how does that affect the people of the world?
Yosana explained her Linguist 2.0. She then used her brain signals to activate her
DigiTab and display a huge list of common Araki words and their relative common
language translation on the LED wall. Mrs. French was fascinated with the work of
Yosana.
Mrs. French asked, Who are the other four people who know this language?
Yosana replied My father, my mother, and my 2 brothers who have no intention of
leaving Mars.
Mrs. French asked, Why do you want to particularly go to Paris University?
Well, I dream of becoming a linguist who decodes the ancient books and culture. I share
my last name with Marianne Griffiths, the renowned Ayurvedic medicine professor
whose collection of books written in Araki were acquired by the Paris University. She is
my own great grandmother.
Mrs. French sat speechless, her eyes wide with amazement, unable to take in that
information for at least a minute. Is it really true? she asked herself. But, soon, she made
a quick obvious decision.