Demosthenes Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 i recently read a book on aliens and other mysteries of the unexplained and in most of the cases, the aliens "spoke" to abductees. no i picked up on a strange fact instantly...y. how the heck would an alien speak english??? they developed on another planet so they would have a different language system (if they communicate through sound at all) so i pose this question... how would an alien speak english???(other than watching us for millenia and learning our language)
npts2020 Posted January 7, 2009 Posted January 7, 2009 What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house.
Mr Skeptic Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Human babies learn to speak any of our languages in a year or two; why would it take an alien race intelligent enough to have interstellar travel millennia to do the same?
Baby Astronaut Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house. Are you kidding? If scientists knew they could talk to dogs but must travel to Mars to do so, you bet they'd be on the way. Anyway, there is lots we don't know about dogs: what are your feelings like? What kind of dreams do you have? What attracts you to lick people? Why do you smell butts? What do you speak about to other dogs? Can you understand any dog you meet? Is your language automatic or do you learn new words/barks? Can you recognize dogs on TV? What do you find attractive in a dog? How sick do you get from eating dry pellets of dog food, the same o'l every day? Can you speak to or understand the language of wild dogs? Do you recognize them as wild? Can you understand alien dogs from other planets?
Mr Skeptic Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Well, we can understand and communicate with bees, which would be about as alien as an alien from another planet.
Baby Astronaut Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Well, we can understand and communicate with bees, which would be about as alien as an alien from another planet. You really mean they communicate back? I would like a source for that one if you don't mind.
NowThatWeKnow Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 so i pose this question...how would an alien speak english???(other than watching us for millenia and learning our language) That is good. You can ask and answer your own question in one sentence. 1
Mr Skeptic Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 You really mean they communicate back? I would like a source for that one if you don't mind. We can understand them, and they can understand us, but that does not mean we can converse. We can tell them where to find flowers, they can tell their hive (we spy) how to find flowers. We have a robot to do the bee dance. Here's a PDF explaining their language.
Baby Astronaut Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 We can understand them, and they can understand us, but that does not mean we can converse. We can tell them where to find flowers, they can tell their hive (we spy) how to find flowers. We have a robot to do the bee dance. Here's a PDF explaining their language. Incredible. Even though it's just really instructions they copied. I guess bees don't have their language developed any further than "go so many paces in that direction until you smell this"? Cool nonetheless.
mabsj2 Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 i believe aliens exist but i don't think they speak english. they probably have their own way of communication unknown to us
npts2020 Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Baby Astronaut; If you don't already know the answers to those questions, you do not already know everything about that dog. The point being, why ask questions of a being who you are likely to know more about than they do of themselves?
CaptainPanic Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house. You still have to tell the dog to sit, go down or stay... I can imagine that it's really funny for an alien if they're able to do this with 6.7 billion people. Oh... waaaait a second. More serious now: The cool thing about English, or any other language that is popular, is that anyone within 100 lightyears can start studying it. (100 lightyears is an approximation for the 100 years ago that we started broadcasting things on radio - probably not the correct number of years though). The signals made by man years ago will reach an ever increasing audience, as more and more aliens (if they exist) will hear. In 100 years from now, everybody within 200 lightyears can hear us. In 900 years from now, every star system within 1000 lightyears will be able to tune in to Earth. I think therefore that chances increase quite rapidly that aliens speak English. The volume of space that can hear us increases with: [math]Volume = lightspeed\cdot{time^3}[/math] It now all depends on how fast they learn to decipher our babblings. I hope they don't think we're talking to them in all the crap we broadcast (imagine that aliens think that love songs are meant for them - the horror scenario that follows!)
Mr Skeptic Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 The volume of space that can hear us increases with:[math]Volume = lightspeed\cdot{time^3}[/math] I think you meant, [math]Volume = (lightspeed\cdot{time})^3[/math]
Baby Astronaut Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 Baby Astronaut; If you don't already know the answers to those questions, you do not already know everything about that dog. The point being, why ask questions of a being who you are likely to know more about than they do of themselves? Granted. But I do know enough that if you pick up any dog magazine, you'll find surprising things often enough to realize just how much we don't know about them. Sure, we know their anatomy better and whatnot. Yet we also know the human anatomy well and even though a patient can inform doctors of their symptoms, a lot of medical problems are still a mystery. Even with the progress of genetics. But a dog is not only different physically, they can't vocally help to identify symptoms, and there are a huge variety of dogs with different nuances in body chemistry. So do we know everything about them better, or just the obvious stuff? Do you think an alien would know your innermost self better than you just because they know more about your physical body than you?
iNow Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 i believe aliens exist but i don't think they speak english. they probably have their own way of communication unknown to us Indeed. Even here just on earth... just among humans (one among a boatload of species), not all speak english. I think your second point is the strong one, though. They may communicate in ways completely unknown to us. Like whales and elephants through ultra-low frequency sound, or bats through sonar, or through scent, or through something completely unrelated to the five senses as we understand them. Interestingly, there's a possibility of this happening right here on earth, as well... Right under our noses, and without us knowing it.
Ender W. Posted January 8, 2009 Posted January 8, 2009 I find it interesting that no one has considered other types of waves. It is completely possible that they communicate through radio waves produced by chemical reactions within their bodies, or possible by subtly altering the electromagnetic fields around them, assuming their planet has one. A plethora of possibilities exist, and sound may actually be primitive and brutish to any other species. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedThen again, they might have no form of communication but writing, assuming they can see. Mabey they had to develop writing before communication could take place, which would give them a much higher literacy rate than us, if nothing else.
npts2020 Posted January 9, 2009 Posted January 9, 2009 Do you think an alien would know your innermost self better than you just because they know more about your physical body than you? Maybe, but who could say for sure? Any beings that knew enough to be able to figure out interstellar travel would likely be pretty far advanced as well in other fields I imagine.
Mokele Posted January 9, 2009 Posted January 9, 2009 possible by subtly altering the electromagnetic fields around them Knifefish already do this, as do elephantfish (electric eels aren't actually eels, just very long and hefty knifefish).
Moontanman Posted January 9, 2009 Posted January 9, 2009 You still have to tell the dog to sit, go down or stay... I can imagine that it's really funny for an alien if they're able to do this with 6.7 billion people. Oh... waaaait a second. More serious now: The cool thing about English, or any other language that is popular, is that anyone within 100 lightyears can start studying it. (100 lightyears is an approximation for the 100 years ago that we started broadcasting things on radio - probably not the correct number of years though). The signals made by man years ago will reach an ever increasing audience, as more and more aliens (if they exist) will hear. In 100 years from now, everybody within 200 lightyears can hear us. In 900 years from now, every star system within 1000 lightyears will be able to tune in to Earth. I think therefore that chances increase quite rapidly that aliens speak English. The volume of space that can hear us increases with: [math]Volume = lightspeed\cdot{time^3}[/math] It now all depends on how fast they learn to decipher our babblings. I hope they don't think we're talking to them in all the crap we broadcast (imagine that aliens think that love songs are meant for them - the horror scenario that follows!) Maybe they will intercept our TV broad casts and think Star Trek is real and want to avoid our hi-tech militaristic space forces? Will they think we can do things that are impossible to them after seing our "history broadcasts" of Star Trek and other scifi TV shows?
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