Concepts in The Ender's Game Series - Stark

Stark (short for Starways Common and also called Common and Starcommon) is the common interstellar language. In the 3000-year gap between the novels Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead it evolved from "IF Common," which in turn evolved from American English. Characters have occasionally cited that the only reason Stark has English as its ancestor is because America was technologically predominant at the beginning of the space age and in particular, when the IF was created. It was hinted that most planets have small American minorities who learn Stark as a first language, but that the majority of humans learn it as a second or even third language. It is the official language of the Starways Congress and the primary language of most of the Hundred Worlds.

Although the characters of Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind speak Stark, their speech has been translated into English in the books, so the reader has no way of ascertaining the difference between the languages. Ender Wiggin, who grew up on Earth thousands of years earlier and speaks American English natively, notes that Stark is very similar to English. Another hint is found in Shadow of the Giant when Ender's mother corrects Bean's grammar pointing out that Bean should have used "whom" instead of "who". Bean responds: "I speak common, not English, and in common there is no such word as 'whom'".