Imagine that one day we receive a signal from a distant planet. A message that is clearly not natural, but artificial. A message indicating the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. How would we respond? How would we communicate? How would we understand their language?
The idea of encountering extraterrestrial life has ignited the imaginations of countless filmmakers, giving rise to iconic works such as Arrival, Contact and Star Trek. But how realistic are these scenarios? Can we really learn to talk to aliens, or would we be forever lost in translation?
The answer is not simple, because language is not just a series of sounds or symbols that convey meaning. Language is also a reflection of culture, cognition and biology. It is shaped by the environment, history and needs of the speakers. Language is influenced by the way we perceive and categorize the world, and by the way our brains and bodies process information.
To communicate with aliens, we would therefore need to understand not only their language, but also their culture, their cognition and their biology. We should discover how they evolved, how they live, how they think and how they express themselves. We should discover what they have in common with us, and what makes them different.
This is not an easy task, even for human languages. Linguists have been studying the diversity and complexity of human languages for centuries, and there are still many mysteries and challenges to be solved. How did language arise in our species? How do languages relate to each other? How do languages change over time? How do languages influence our thinking and behavior?
These questions become even more difficult when we look at foreign languages. We have no idea what kind of languages aliens might have, or if they have language at all.
We have no idea what kind of sounds or symbols they might use, or what kind of grammar or logic they might follow. We cannot know whether they have similar concepts or categories as we do, or whether they have completely different ways of seeing and understanding reality.
Linguists even argue that foreign languages may be so different from human languages that we could never learn or communicate with them.
They argue that human languages share some universal features rooted in our biology and cognition, and that alien languages may lack these features or have features incompatible with ours.
For example, human languages use discrete units of sound (phonemes) or writing (graphemes) that together form words and sentences. But alien languages can use continuous signals that vary in pitch, intensity, or duration, with no clear boundaries between units.
Human languages have hierarchical structures that allow us to embed clauses within clauses, creating complex meanings. But alien languages may have linear structures that allow for only simple strings of words or symbols.
We have recursive rules that allow us to generate infinite sentences from a finite set of elements. Alien languages may have finite rules that limit the number of possible sentences.
These are just a few hypothetical examples of how alien languages might differ from human languages. There may be other differences that we cannot even imagine because they are beyond our cognitive abilities or our sensory modalities.
For example, aliens may use colors, smells, gestures, or telepathy to communicate, rather than sounds or writing. Aliens may have different senses or organs than we do, such as echolocation or infrared vision. Aliens may have different ways of thinking than we do, such as parallel processing or quantum computing.
All these factors can make foreign languages incomprehensible to us, or vice versa. We may not be able to perceive or produce their signals. We may not be able to parse their structures, or follow their rules. People may not be able to grasp their meanings, or convey ours.
However, not all linguists are pessimistic about the possibility of communicating with aliens. Some linguists argue that alien languages may have some similarities with human languages that could facilitate mutual understanding.
They suggest that there may be some general principles or constraints that govern all forms of communication in the universe, regardless of the specifics of each language.
Arik Kershenbaum, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, believes that evolutionary challenges are truly universal, and that the evolutionary forces shaping life on Earth will produce many similar features in extraterrestrial life. If he is right, this would mean that life – and language – across the cosmos could share certain characteristics.
It means that all languages must have a way to distinguish between different types of information (such as nouns versus verbs), different roles of participants (such as subject versus object), different relationships between events (such as cause versus effect), and different levels of certainty (such as fact versus opinion). These differences are essential for any communication system that wants to convey meaningful messages around the world.
“My personal view is that language should be at its core quite similar to ours, in the sense that its formal mathematical nature would be similar to human language,” says Ian Roberts, a professor of linguistics who also is at the University of Cambridge. “But at the same time, they wouldn’t necessarily have anything like speech.”
Linguists also argue that all languages must have a way to signal the speaker’s context and intent (such as time, place, mood, purpose), and a way to signal the listener’s feedback and understanding (such as asking , answers, confirmations, corrections). These signals are crucial for any communication system that aims to establish and maintain a dialogue between interlocutors.
These are some possible examples of how alien languages may have similarities to human languages. There may be other similarities that we can discover or create by using our creativity and curiosity.
We may find common ground in the topics that interest us, such as science, art or philosophy, or invent new symbols or gestures that can represent universal concepts, such as numbers, shapes or emotions.
These are some hopeful examples of how we can communicate with aliens, if we ever encounter them. Of course, we can’t be sure if this will ever happen and if it will be successful.