Assume that in this culture that everyone can read minds and project images into the minds of others. Can there be a way for such a culture to evolve speech?
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This will be hard to answer without knowing the species. – Frostfyre Feb 15 '16 at 18:20
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Please read [ask] and add more details. As it stands, this question is infinitely broad. – Aify Feb 15 '16 at 18:22
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3Somewhat related: Would people develop spoken language if everyone was telepathic? – DaaaahWhoosh Feb 15 '16 at 18:30
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1Telepathy is a faculty that must trained and to make any significant use out of; It could also be very taxing on the body. As result your psionic race will develop a spoken language. – Trismegistus Feb 15 '16 at 20:28
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This is out of scope for Worldbuilding, it is however in scope for the currently in definition scope of Hypotheticals (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/95463/what-ifhypotheticals). – Oak Feb 16 '16 at 03:04
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@Oak This is in no way out of scope for world building, it is simply too broad. – James Apr 18 '16 at 04:37
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They probably wouldn't develop their own language, but if they were exposed to another species that does use language, then they would probably learn the concept pretty quickly (and then be able to teach each other).
Simpson17866
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For privacy!
I assume you by "telepathy" do not mean "mind reading". Broadcasting your message to everybody in proximity has some disadvantages. Perhaps you do not want everybody to hear it? Or want to have control over the information? Then you must have a more secure way of communication. That is a so strong motivation that I predict development of a language would appear anyway.
That is, if you do not count the transfer protocol and encoding of the telepathic message as a language. From a theoretical linguistic point of view, that is a language too.
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