Universal Translator...

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I have a friend who can speak 5 languages, some better than others, however she can converse in English, French, Italian, Turkish and Spanish. My question is if there was no universal translator how do you think we would manage to interact with other species, how many different species languages could one hope to learn without a UT. There was the Alien in Voyagers Hope and Fear that had the ability to learn languages on the fly, I suppose he was the exception rather then the rule. Any thoughts???

 

[Timo]

It isn't unusual for well-traveled people to learn a dozen languages fluently enough to do business - and perhaps more, if some of the languages are closely related, such as German, Dutch and the Nordic languages. The TNG "Icarus Factor" reference to a man who spoke forty languages (supposedly beyond "hello" and "thank you") would still count as a freak show level achievement today, though.

One wonders whether space aliens could have languages that are so radically different from Earth ones that they pose a special difficulty in learning. After all, many Earth languages are pretty dissimilar from each other already. If the aliens speak in the classic human manner, that is, use vibrations of air to communicate their thoughts and do not add a significant degree of body language or other complications, then learning their languages probably wouldn't be more difficult than learning human languages.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of common ancient heritage to Earth languages. But I for one come from a country where the two most prominent languages are utterly unrelated to each other in terms of deep underlying grammatic concepts - even if both languages have later been encrusted with common "international" vocabulary. I really cannot fathom how Klingonese or Cylonese or Coruscantian could be more distant from my native Finnish than my also-native Swedish is...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Icemizer]

The basic language is math after that its all grunts, whistles, and clicks.

 

[Kaziarl]

The basic language is math after that its all grunts, whistles, and clicks.

Personally I think chemistry would be even more basic then that. Different languages have different representations for 1+1=2. It could be + = . but in chemistry if you show a picture of an atom with one proton, and one electron, then it's hydrogen no matter what the name is.

 

[Timo]

...Assuming that your version of chemistry interprets the electron as a particle, rather than an orbital. Or the proton as a particle, rather than a gangbang of three particles.

And even elementary math may come in sufficiently different varieties to be unrecognizable across cultural borders. Not all species need believe in the significance or even existence of integers, for example. And they may have absurd-seeming ways of expressing basic mathematical concepts. Certainly ours are...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MetalPants]

We just all need to find a fish to put in our ear!

 

[stoneagepunk]

We can practice communicating with other intelligent species here on earth - dolphins for example. But we don't understand their language yet. I don't think we would do any better with Aliens from Space.