As all the spoken Stark is translated into the native language of the reader, there is a scarcity of Stark examples to analyze. Several speakers mention that Stark is not English, and one points out that Stark does not include the word whom.Stark
SPOKEN BY
Stark (Starways Common) is a universal language and the official language of the Starways Conference, which oversees the many planetary governments.
DOCUMENTED BY
Orson Scott Card (1951– ) published the short story “Ender’s Game” in 1977 and then spun that tale into the novel Ender’s Game (1985) so that he could write the sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). The complete series consists of ten short stories and these eleven books: Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide (1991), Children of the Mind (1996), Ender’s Shadow (1999), Shadow of the Hegemon (2001), Shadow Puppets (2002), First Meetings (a collection of short stories, 2002), Shadow of the Giant (2005), A War of Gifts: An Ender Story (2007), and Ender in Exile (2008).
BEHIND THE WORDS
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a child-warrior being trained at Battle School to fight the alien Formics. Only at the end of the novel does he realize that he has been tricked into committing genocide. The result sends him on a quest for meaning and redemption throughout the galaxy. Although the original short story and the first book are military science fiction, Speaker for the Dead and some of the other titles in the series focus more on philosophy, moral questions, and alien cultures.
DERIVATION OF THE LANGUAGE
Stark is said to derive from English but only because America was the most technologically advanced country when IF Common (the forerunner to Starways Common) was being developed.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE
As all the spoken Stark is translated into the native language of the reader, there is a scarcity of Stark examples to analyze. Several speakers mention that Stark is not English, and one points out that Stark does not include the word whom.
PHILOLOGICAL FACT
Thanks to relativistic space travel, Ender ages only twenty-five years between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, while 3,000 years pass between the events that occur in each book.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Review the works listed above, the resources listed in the bibliography, and the web page: “Concepts in the Ender’s Game series” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender%27s_Game_series).
SPEAKING OF LANGUAGES
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
—Confucius