[RyanW]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I agree with Anaraxes - it seems to me the smart thing is to learn the language that most of your local text is written in, and your local audio recordings are spoken in - i.e. whatever the majority language was before. There'll be a profound dislocation, but everyone's in the same boat.

Could people learn the language fast enough to keep critical infrastructure running? Imagine the Northeast blackout of 2003, except the consoles are all in what might as well be ancient Sumerian and the operators only know how to ask one another where the library is.