Flandry becomes acquainted with his crew:
eight human beings, none from Terra;
one Schotanian, humanoid but yellow-haired and horned;
two Gorzuni, four-armed, gray-furred;
one Donarrian, a purple and blue gorilloid centauroid.
All career personnel with Terran citizenship.
Are such dissimilar species ever likely to interact and cooperate so easily? The British sf writer, Bob Shaw, never wrote conversations between human beings and extra-terrestrials because he thought that such easy communication was implausible: aliens sounding as if they spoke perfect English - or even Anglic. I would like to work alongside intelligent beings like Schotanians etc but how probable is it? Nothing ever happens as it was imagined.
7 comments:
The existence of parrots suggests that there will be cases where two unrelated intelligent species can make the sounds of each others languages & so communicate in one of them.
OTOH there are likely to be many intelligent species that communicate in different sound ranges or using something other than sound eg: intelligent species that use bioluminescent organs like fireflies, changing skin color like cephalopods, or something human sign languages.
There may be many cases where one species can hear & interpret the sounds of another, but not make the sounds themselves, so each species would speak its own language & have to learn to understand the other species language.
Exactly.
In the Technic history, sapient species are two-for-a-penny, so there are going to be -some- similar enough to humans to interact easily. Scothians are extremely humanoid, for example.
We use one facial orifice for three purposes: eating, breathing and speaking. Variations: humming; whistling; singing; laughing; cheering; jeering; sneering. Why assume that the universe is full of beings that do all of this exactly as we do?
Paul: it doesn't have to be, but if there are -lots- of sapients, then -some- will probably do the same -- or something similar enough to be mutually compatible. (Vibrating panels on the body to produce sounds, for example.)
Mammals all use their mouths for breathing, eating and vocalizing. Birds vocalize in a rather different way, probably evolved by dinosaurs long before mammals evolved.
Kaor, to All!
And I lean more to Stirling's argument: assuming the existence of many intelligent races, parallel evolution makes it seems likely some will be enough like others that communication will be possible.
Ad astra! Sean
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