Language mixing, shifting, and drifting (Space colony lingua franca)

My space colonists (160 people) are mostly scientists with at least two advanced degrees and some research experience. They all speak English because it is a language of science today. However, the majority of them are not native speakers of English. The languages that have the most native speakers are English, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and French.

The ship's data banks contain knowledge in many languages, including dead and not spoken by the colonists. The AI is fluent in all the languages that the crew speaks and is capable of learning any language in its database. The AI is sufficiently advanced (there is still a debate whether it is truly sentient, though) to tutor all willing to learn a new language. It proved to be very beneficial for romantic relationships, quality leisure time, and mental health.

I am wondering how the language would shift, drift, or mix over years. I suppose that the first generation will stick to English as a lingua franca, but the following generations would change it to adapt to a new world and to accommodate new cultural concepts. I need some help with general language drift direction and maybe some references I could check for similar existing linguistic phenomena.

EDIT: As @AlexP noted, the question is quite broad. However, since the dialogue should remain understandable for the average readers, I am looking into changes that would be noticeable and comply with general linguistic trends, yet, not dramatic enough to make the text incomprehensible.

For example, I think that articles might disappear quite early because they are one of the hardest to master concepts in English for speakers of languages that do not have articles, e.g. Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese. Russians and Chinese will comprise a significant part of the crew.

posted about 7 years ago

Olga‭

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