I enjoyed thinking about why language might not change as much in the next 5000 years as it has in the past 1000. For one thing, widespread literacy and a relat

I enjoyed thinking about why language might not change as much in the next 5000 years as it has in the past 1000. For one thing, widespread literacy and a relatively stable canon of literature should keep successive generations mutually intelligible. In the case of the novel's space society, I find it at least plausible that media archives from earth and thousands of hours of The Saga being viewed by all educated humans would freeze the spoken language in its current state.