Communicating With The Sigman

Poul Anderson, The Byworlder, IV.

Position, gesture and possibly voluntary odours may be more important than sound;

sounds, from vibrating tympani, are only partly reproducible by a synthesizer;

the language simultaneously uses hundreds of frequencies and amplitudes;

communication may involve many concepts at once or deal with aspects of reality that human beings treat one piece at a time;

the Sigman speaks and possibly thinks more slowly than human beings;

attempts to synthesize his sounds have been annoying or even painful to him;

human drawings and alphabet have been too ugly;

constructing an artificial language manageable and comprehensible by both species failed;

Yvonne uses a computer to devise a language that obeys the harmony rules detectable in the Sigman's speech;

at last, the Sigman responds positively.