Basic Trope: An alien language is grammatically almost identical to the language of the target audience.
- Straight: The inhabitants of Planet Troperius speak a language with grammar similar to that of European languages.
- Exaggerated: The language of Planet Troperius is almost perfect English.
- Downplayed: The language of Planet Troperius has an unusual grammar, but enough for the universal translator to pick it up.
- Justified:
- The inhabitants of Troperius are Human Aliens, descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans who discovered a wormhole, ended up there, and evolved much like the various humans of Earth did.
- In ages past, aliens enslaved an Indo-European tribe. He Who Fought Oppressors became oppressive in turn, and the resulting empire dominated the galaxy, and the majority of alien languages today are descended from the language of The Empire.
- The structures of the sentences (not only with Indo-European languages, but in general with those of planet Earth) are more common throughout the universe than it may seem.
- Inverted:
- The inhabitants of Planet Troperius speak a totally alien language even the universal translator can't decipher.
- Humans learned Proto-Indo-European from alien precursors.
- Subverted: Troperians speak a language that looks or sounds Indo-European at first, but the grammar is actually exotic bordering on Starfish Language.
- Double Subverted: In the end it turns out that they were misunderstanding him and if they structurally resemble Indo-European languages.
- Parodied: The aliens often complain about the absurd grammar of their own language, which is almost identical to [Insert Target Indo-European Here].
- Zig-Zagged:
- The structure varies according to the meaning of the sentence.
- The aliens come from a multicultural planet, and the structure of the phrases is variable according to the culture.
- Averted: The structure of the sentences is totally different from those of the Indo-European languages.
- Enforced: "We need an alien language whose structure is easy to remember."
- Lampshaded: "The grammatical structures are very similar to those of the Indo-European languages, what were the chances of that happening?"
- Invoked: The aliens had no language, then they made First Contact with a human who natively spoke an Indo-European language, and when they return to their homeworld, they teach that language to the other inhabitants, who use it as the base for their own language.
- Exploited: During the First Contact, translators compare their phrases with those of Indo-European languages.
- Defied: The aliens try to make their language less reminiscient from European languages, thinking that they will confuse humans.
- Discussed: "This is my thesis, on why the dominant language of Troperius looks like a satem
version of Proto-Celtic with Verner's law." - Conversed: "I wonder why aliens speak Indo-European langauges."
- Deconstructed: The aliens came with warlike intentions, but once somebody who speaks English figures out their language's grammatical similarity to English, it becomes only a matter of time before humans repel the attack.
- Reconstructed:
- The aliens are so far ahead in their plan of conquest that humans figuring out how to decode their language wouldn't do much good now.
- The aliens began their invasion in a remote place where English isn't yet widespread.
- The aliens also have languages that are like Finnish, Mandarin, Swahili, and Cree, and they use those to communicate once their English is found out.
Back to Indo-European Alien Language
