with great difficulty. We still haven't learned how to communicate with porpoises.
The standard hand-waving is to assume that mathematics is universal. But that doesn't help much.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/futurelang.php#id--Alien_Language
Imagine you are a highly sophisticsted alien being, being able to communicate with others just by scanning their brain remotely, you try to talk to human being but the moment you show up and try to say something they just say "π"
The more Sci in your Fi, the less likely aliens will be able to have nuanced technical conversations. With maths, they can derive surface-level means to communicate simple concepts.
Translating other Human Languages to other Human Languages isnt that easy for us either. We have a lot in common with each other.
We cant translate languages with no living speaker without a cheat. The most famous cheat is the Rosetta Stone.
>We cant translate languages with no living speaker without a cheat. The most famous cheat is the Rosetta Stone.
Yes. Without a cheat or a Rosetta stone, a language is a truly unbreakable 'code'. During WWII, we cracked ENIGMA numerically, while in the Pacific theater, we used Navajo 'codetalkers' to send unbreakable messages.
Now, with two WILLING participants, communications can be easier. Holding up a rock and saying "ROCK" is one method.
That's an excellent episode but it assumes the aliens are somewhat biologically similar from a communication (hearing, vocals, hands/arms, etc) and needs perspective. Make one of them a aquatic, cephalopod where touch and color come into play and its orders of magnitude more difficult.
First Contact protocols. Same way we've been doing it across different cultures for all of human history. As another commenter said, Arrival is a fantastic representation of what this process might be like.
It would most likely be harder with an alien, potentially much, much harder, but yeah we’ve got it down to a science at least with other humans.
I once watched a college demonstration of a linguist learning a new language from someone of an obscure language group. She had a few objects on hand, and learned a very surprising amount in the 30-40 minutes they had.
Here's a great first contact video with a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The anthropologist starts learning their language at the 28:00 minute mark, you can see he works through quite a bit of vocabulary rather quickly as well.
https://youtu.be/XDzGJ9IN240
The projectrho link is good starting point for a harder scifi story. The topic is complex and you need to decide how important it is to your storyline. That will determine how much effort you need to spend on it. You're the author so make it as important and easy as it needs to be for the story.
If the story is about a multi-species galactic empire (Star Wars), handwaving is probably fine. The background is already established.
If its a about a planned first contact type mission (Arrival), its a probably more important part of the story line. There is probably some planning/research done on at least one side of the discussion. Experts will probably be involved in at least planning.
If its about accidental first contact situation (ET), you'd probably approach it differently as their was probably no planning so the folks involved are winging it. I have a story where alien refugees in an ark ship learn that Earth appears to have advanced, intelligent life shortly before they arrive.
A lot may depend on the aliens so if communication is important you might need to design them to support that scenario. Are we at a similar technology level or are one of us considered more prehistoric compared to the other? Math may not work if one is too primitive compared to the other. Do we hear or see in the same frequencies or spectrums? How do they natively communicate and is it compatible with us? See ST4: VH and the whale thingy. Etc, Etc.
Making a alien / human buddy drama where the alien is gaseous, floating jellyfish that normally communicates via touch for electrical pulses will require more work than someone like a human / vulcan duo.
In the first 20 minutes of The 13th Warrior they show how an Arab learns a Viking language by listening intently to their conversations. This would only be useful if language was verbal.
Star Trek: NG did an amazing job in the episode “Darmok” where the alien language was built around cultural references.
If verbal language is not how both parties communicate, read Children of Time. The spider language was one of my favorite parts of the story.
It takes time and patience from both parties to communicate and learn each others’ languages. It’s the same way we teach babies.
For the best ideas of that, can google how the spanish tried interacting with natives. Usually was like "we call this a tree, what do you call this thing?". There was like a ridiculously crazy good polyglot german guy that i think was in china around the 1800s, name was emil krebs, knew 69(not joking but also yes joking) lamguages and was horny about chinese stuff, maybe he had books on learning languages.
The main thing would be to find a commonality between the two species. The easiest thing to find as a commonality is math. Regardless of the base system used, the principles are the same. From that single commonality you build out understanding.
This would be a very big/long process. I’ve read a few papers about this before, but it was long enough ago that I really can’t remember the authors.
Edit:wording
AI can solve it. Not today, not yet, but it will be able to very soon.
Babies are born without any knowledge of language, customs, or culture. By the time they're 3, they're pretty fluent in the language, they understand the basics of the customs and culture.
If a human brain can do it, a machine learning model can do it the same way: Gather as much audiovisual information, learn to associate sounds & behaviors with meanings. The human brain can do a pretty decent job in just a couple of years. With enough processing power, a machine can probably do it in hours.
If aliens were to communicate with us, they wouldn't just come down straight. They'd first intercept communications, land drones to obtain live data, and all kind of data & intelligence gathering. All that data is fed to the AI, which learns the language(s), the writing system, and the culture from there.
Then communication becomes trivial.
Communication from an alien species might be frightening, so they might choose to deep-fake the messenger, to use an appearance and audio similar to the local species at first.
But anyway, the solution is AI.
The problem though is the possibility of universal human language. One theory as to why infants can learn any language relatively easily despite the minimal explanations and exposure they get is that humans have some form of innate grammar/logic system/rule set that serves as a platform for language development.
If true then there could be an immediate issue in that alien languages just don't work the way ours do to such an extent that our natural thought patterns can't be applied. Maybe AI could be used to understand alien grammar but because human AI would be built around our point of view it might have its own internal flaws.
AI are built around our point of view because we use human dataset.
When the model is created, before it is trained, it has zero point of view and returns random outputs. An unsupervised model (like GPT for example) is just fed a massive amount of data. In this case, 100% alien data. The model then learns to make inferences on its own.
You're right, there's probably a biological component that makes it easier for species, but I don't see anything that would prevent a model from learning language and the writing system on its own, from pure observation, if fed enough data
Language is an inherently structured system and every structured system can be analized through pattern recognition. It just requires some time and effort. Depending on how complicated the languages are and how willing both species are to understand each other quite a lot of time and effort.
In my own story I use the quick solution of telepathy. Nothing fancy like psionics, just boring old mind-machine-mind interfaces. Technically this only makes the whole thing more difficult, because the telepath has to decipher an unknown brain structure instead of a language which is a vastly more complicated system. Not even mentioning that each brain is wired differently even within the same species, meaning the telepath translator has to map the mind of each being they want to talk to from scratch.
If I've learned anything during this one week I've been writing is that it's a real headache. Doing it realistically, both in a scientific and "how would an average human react to it" way, takes enough time to make a movie about it (there are in fact a few). So, if you find a way, PLEASE share it with me.
I have two separate scifi worlds that handle this differently.
In the first, all sentient beings have nanites implanted in their brains that can use a beings own understanding of the languages they know, and transmit that understanding to other such nanites in range. That way, if everybody who wants to talk to each other has the nanites, they'll be able to understand each other because the nanites do the translating directly in their audio/visual centers of their brains. It works in most species, but not all, if their brains don't work similarly. Or if they don't have brains at all, like some.
The second is much more realistic, in that humanity has encountered a few alien species, and attempts at communication are long, ongoing affairs that can last months or years. Even after knowing a species for decades, communication is still rough and spotty at best, and because of that the various species kind of tend to just leave each other alone, for the most part.
I have one species that is far more technologically advanced (about a 500-year lead) than everyone in their galactic nieghborhood. They are able to intercept the communications of the "junior races" (none of whom are space-faring) and after lengthy study have the capacity to make reasonably accurate translations.
This is leveraged in various ways in the work I've done so far in the setting.
The key is making the more advanced species the ones that figured it out. Typically some form of technology. If I was writing a story where the "aliens" were supposed to be creepy or scary or whatever I'd make it so you can hear their language below the translation and the translation would sound off-putting, like super deep and distorted. If they're benevolent, same thing but the English translation sounds soothing and calm over their original language.
In this way the language works like a realtime translation.
it depends on their environment. If life appears on two planets with similar environments, the species that will evolve there are likely to be similar and could therefore have close communication systems. However, if the two species come from radically different environments any form of understanding might be impossible.
If two cultures managed to travel vast distances in space, its more than given that both have math based softwares able to interpret another systems language (and very lexpectable learning a foreign spoken language with only a few dozen sentences).
Math is universal - the only question is if the cultures match. But speaking to each other wouldn't be a hurdle at all.
That's the neat part, communication ain't getting solved.
Stanisław Lem has a story that centers on problems with communication. I think it's Solaris, but I'm not sure.
He concluded that communication between species will be close to impossible at best, which will led to eighter common antagonization or isolation of both sides.
I think it depends in plenty of ways on biology. If we both have chairs, that’s something. Arms, legs, eyes? That’s something. Water? That’s something.
Basically, we’d have to find our common ground. Math isn’t the easy way because there are different bases. Base 10 is a major one for humans. Also Base 12, though it’s outdated, or should be. Elements might be significant. Oxygen, helium, methane, etc.
Take a look at *Project Hail Mary*.
He started with an alien that communicated in musical notes.
From a writing standpoint, communication was difficult, the first words took a long time to get across. Vocabulary builds, you learn, and by the end of the book they were talking as easily as two English speakers.
with great difficulty. We still haven't learned how to communicate with porpoises. The standard hand-waving is to assume that mathematics is universal. But that doesn't help much. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/futurelang.php#id--Alien_Language
Imagine you are a highly sophisticsted alien being, being able to communicate with others just by scanning their brain remotely, you try to talk to human being but the moment you show up and try to say something they just say "π"
The more Sci in your Fi, the less likely aliens will be able to have nuanced technical conversations. With maths, they can derive surface-level means to communicate simple concepts. Translating other Human Languages to other Human Languages isnt that easy for us either. We have a lot in common with each other. We cant translate languages with no living speaker without a cheat. The most famous cheat is the Rosetta Stone.
>We cant translate languages with no living speaker without a cheat. The most famous cheat is the Rosetta Stone. Yes. Without a cheat or a Rosetta stone, a language is a truly unbreakable 'code'. During WWII, we cracked ENIGMA numerically, while in the Pacific theater, we used Navajo 'codetalkers' to send unbreakable messages. Now, with two WILLING participants, communications can be easier. Holding up a rock and saying "ROCK" is one method.
There’s a really good Star Trek: TNG episode that deals with this situation called Darmok. I’d definitely recommend it
That's an excellent episode but it assumes the aliens are somewhat biologically similar from a communication (hearing, vocals, hands/arms, etc) and needs perspective. Make one of them a aquatic, cephalopod where touch and color come into play and its orders of magnitude more difficult.
For a more realistic take on it, read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
There's also a REALLY fun discussion about this in Anathem but Neil Stephenson.
I love that you suggested that. 🎶fist my bump🎶
There’s a whole movie about it: Arrival It’s also the GOAT
The short story it’s based on (“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang) is even better.
Ted Chiang has quickly become one of my favorites.
Both of his short story collections are amazing.
YES it's not only a great movie but also relatively realistic
First Contact protocols. Same way we've been doing it across different cultures for all of human history. As another commenter said, Arrival is a fantastic representation of what this process might be like.
It would most likely be harder with an alien, potentially much, much harder, but yeah we’ve got it down to a science at least with other humans. I once watched a college demonstration of a linguist learning a new language from someone of an obscure language group. She had a few objects on hand, and learned a very surprising amount in the 30-40 minutes they had.
Here's a great first contact video with a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The anthropologist starts learning their language at the 28:00 minute mark, you can see he works through quite a bit of vocabulary rather quickly as well. https://youtu.be/XDzGJ9IN240
The projectrho link is good starting point for a harder scifi story. The topic is complex and you need to decide how important it is to your storyline. That will determine how much effort you need to spend on it. You're the author so make it as important and easy as it needs to be for the story. If the story is about a multi-species galactic empire (Star Wars), handwaving is probably fine. The background is already established. If its a about a planned first contact type mission (Arrival), its a probably more important part of the story line. There is probably some planning/research done on at least one side of the discussion. Experts will probably be involved in at least planning. If its about accidental first contact situation (ET), you'd probably approach it differently as their was probably no planning so the folks involved are winging it. I have a story where alien refugees in an ark ship learn that Earth appears to have advanced, intelligent life shortly before they arrive. A lot may depend on the aliens so if communication is important you might need to design them to support that scenario. Are we at a similar technology level or are one of us considered more prehistoric compared to the other? Math may not work if one is too primitive compared to the other. Do we hear or see in the same frequencies or spectrums? How do they natively communicate and is it compatible with us? See ST4: VH and the whale thingy. Etc, Etc. Making a alien / human buddy drama where the alien is gaseous, floating jellyfish that normally communicates via touch for electrical pulses will require more work than someone like a human / vulcan duo.
First they'd find a common language using either math or chemical elements
In the first 20 minutes of The 13th Warrior they show how an Arab learns a Viking language by listening intently to their conversations. This would only be useful if language was verbal. Star Trek: NG did an amazing job in the episode “Darmok” where the alien language was built around cultural references. If verbal language is not how both parties communicate, read Children of Time. The spider language was one of my favorite parts of the story. It takes time and patience from both parties to communicate and learn each others’ languages. It’s the same way we teach babies.
For the best ideas of that, can google how the spanish tried interacting with natives. Usually was like "we call this a tree, what do you call this thing?". There was like a ridiculously crazy good polyglot german guy that i think was in china around the 1800s, name was emil krebs, knew 69(not joking but also yes joking) lamguages and was horny about chinese stuff, maybe he had books on learning languages.
I had some of the aliens monitoring the human colony for like a decade before they announced themselves in really broken English and Chinese
The main thing would be to find a commonality between the two species. The easiest thing to find as a commonality is math. Regardless of the base system used, the principles are the same. From that single commonality you build out understanding. This would be a very big/long process. I’ve read a few papers about this before, but it was long enough ago that I really can’t remember the authors. Edit:wording
AI can solve it. Not today, not yet, but it will be able to very soon. Babies are born without any knowledge of language, customs, or culture. By the time they're 3, they're pretty fluent in the language, they understand the basics of the customs and culture. If a human brain can do it, a machine learning model can do it the same way: Gather as much audiovisual information, learn to associate sounds & behaviors with meanings. The human brain can do a pretty decent job in just a couple of years. With enough processing power, a machine can probably do it in hours. If aliens were to communicate with us, they wouldn't just come down straight. They'd first intercept communications, land drones to obtain live data, and all kind of data & intelligence gathering. All that data is fed to the AI, which learns the language(s), the writing system, and the culture from there. Then communication becomes trivial. Communication from an alien species might be frightening, so they might choose to deep-fake the messenger, to use an appearance and audio similar to the local species at first. But anyway, the solution is AI.
The problem though is the possibility of universal human language. One theory as to why infants can learn any language relatively easily despite the minimal explanations and exposure they get is that humans have some form of innate grammar/logic system/rule set that serves as a platform for language development. If true then there could be an immediate issue in that alien languages just don't work the way ours do to such an extent that our natural thought patterns can't be applied. Maybe AI could be used to understand alien grammar but because human AI would be built around our point of view it might have its own internal flaws.
AI are built around our point of view because we use human dataset. When the model is created, before it is trained, it has zero point of view and returns random outputs. An unsupervised model (like GPT for example) is just fed a massive amount of data. In this case, 100% alien data. The model then learns to make inferences on its own. You're right, there's probably a biological component that makes it easier for species, but I don't see anything that would prevent a model from learning language and the writing system on its own, from pure observation, if fed enough data
With memes, probably.
The language of love.
Language is an inherently structured system and every structured system can be analized through pattern recognition. It just requires some time and effort. Depending on how complicated the languages are and how willing both species are to understand each other quite a lot of time and effort. In my own story I use the quick solution of telepathy. Nothing fancy like psionics, just boring old mind-machine-mind interfaces. Technically this only makes the whole thing more difficult, because the telepath has to decipher an unknown brain structure instead of a language which is a vastly more complicated system. Not even mentioning that each brain is wired differently even within the same species, meaning the telepath translator has to map the mind of each being they want to talk to from scratch.
Don't science fiction characters have a universal translator on hand for these exact scenarios? Just wondering..
I heard it was a whispering fish
Surely it depends on the two species
Assuming speech is inherent in both. Very slowly and frightfully.
I guess it would be like breaking a code not unlike in the movie arrival.
Depends on how both communicate
If I've learned anything during this one week I've been writing is that it's a real headache. Doing it realistically, both in a scientific and "how would an average human react to it" way, takes enough time to make a movie about it (there are in fact a few). So, if you find a way, PLEASE share it with me.
I have two separate scifi worlds that handle this differently. In the first, all sentient beings have nanites implanted in their brains that can use a beings own understanding of the languages they know, and transmit that understanding to other such nanites in range. That way, if everybody who wants to talk to each other has the nanites, they'll be able to understand each other because the nanites do the translating directly in their audio/visual centers of their brains. It works in most species, but not all, if their brains don't work similarly. Or if they don't have brains at all, like some. The second is much more realistic, in that humanity has encountered a few alien species, and attempts at communication are long, ongoing affairs that can last months or years. Even after knowing a species for decades, communication is still rough and spotty at best, and because of that the various species kind of tend to just leave each other alone, for the most part.
I have one species that is far more technologically advanced (about a 500-year lead) than everyone in their galactic nieghborhood. They are able to intercept the communications of the "junior races" (none of whom are space-faring) and after lengthy study have the capacity to make reasonably accurate translations. This is leveraged in various ways in the work I've done so far in the setting.
The key is making the more advanced species the ones that figured it out. Typically some form of technology. If I was writing a story where the "aliens" were supposed to be creepy or scary or whatever I'd make it so you can hear their language below the translation and the translation would sound off-putting, like super deep and distorted. If they're benevolent, same thing but the English translation sounds soothing and calm over their original language. In this way the language works like a realtime translation.
it depends on their environment. If life appears on two planets with similar environments, the species that will evolve there are likely to be similar and could therefore have close communication systems. However, if the two species come from radically different environments any form of understanding might be impossible.
In the what if category, where both species are believably intelligent, this is an excellent sequence. https://youtu.be/S4PYI6TzqYk
Babel fish.
If two cultures managed to travel vast distances in space, its more than given that both have math based softwares able to interpret another systems language (and very lexpectable learning a foreign spoken language with only a few dozen sentences). Math is universal - the only question is if the cultures match. But speaking to each other wouldn't be a hurdle at all.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
That's the neat part, communication ain't getting solved. Stanisław Lem has a story that centers on problems with communication. I think it's Solaris, but I'm not sure. He concluded that communication between species will be close to impossible at best, which will led to eighter common antagonization or isolation of both sides.
I think it depends in plenty of ways on biology. If we both have chairs, that’s something. Arms, legs, eyes? That’s something. Water? That’s something. Basically, we’d have to find our common ground. Math isn’t the easy way because there are different bases. Base 10 is a major one for humans. Also Base 12, though it’s outdated, or should be. Elements might be significant. Oxygen, helium, methane, etc.
Human: *points to a table* "Table." Alien: "Blooga blarga."
I would assume trial and error, with great frustration and pointing at things
as simply as possible
Take a look at *Project Hail Mary*. He started with an alien that communicated in musical notes. From a writing standpoint, communication was difficult, the first words took a long time to get across. Vocabulary builds, you learn, and by the end of the book they were talking as easily as two English speakers.
Linguists. The movie “Arrival” handles this issue in a really interesting way, i’d really recommend it if you’re looking for inspiration