Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.
Today marks the release of one of the summer’s hottest blockbusters: Disclosure Day. Here’s what director Steven Spielberg had to say about the film in a recent interview with SciAm’s associate books editor Bri Kane:
[CLIP: Director Steven Spielberg speaks with Scientific American’s Bri Kane: “This was a human interest story. And yes, it is a story about extraterrestrial, you know, contact, communication, interaction, but it’s also a story about secrets. It’s a story about the unknown, and it’s also a story about, ‘Why should the unknown be known by some people and not all people?’”]
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Feltman: You can check out Bri’s full conversation with Spielberg at ScientificAmerican.com or on our YouTube channel. But for today’s episode, we decided to take a closer look at one of those themes in particular: alien communication. What makes a language sound “alien” enough for a sci-fi film—and what do linguists think it would actually be like to try to understand an extraterrestrial visitor?
My guest today is Jeffrey Punske, an associate professor in the school of languages and linguistics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale [SIU]. And while he’s an expert in real, actual human language, he’s also spent a lot of time thinking about alien speech—from how Hamlet might sound in Klingon to why math might be the best way to communicate with alien civilizations.
Feltman: Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today.
Jeffrey Punske: Thank you. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
Feltman: So how did you get interested in the idea of alien languages?
Punske: So that’s a really interesting question. I got into this in a sort of sideways way. When I came to SIU, I started working with students on projects related to constructed languages and invented languages. [I] ended up editing a book on that through Oxford University Press on how to use invented languages to sort of reach students and teach them about linguistics.
And from that, I sort of made these connections with some folks that had some affiliations with organizations that are sort of interested in questions of extraterrestrial communication. And I really approached this question as “Well, how can we utilize this sort of concept of thinking about aliens, thinking about communication to better understand what we know about human language?”
So that’s what really interested me about this topic and how I started to get involved in it.
Feltman: Very cool. So our excuse for chatting with you about linguistics is the new movie Disclosure Day, and I read an interview actually where Emily Blunt said that she sort of went into the studio and made as many strange noises as she could make with her body to give them stuff to work with to create this pivotal scene where she’s, you know, a conduit for alien language.
[CLIP: Emily Blunt appears in a scene from the trailer of the movie Disclosure Day: “Let’s let’s, today is—today” (muttering indistinctly, hissing and clicking tongue).]
But my understanding is that’s often not how languages are, are constructed. Could you tell us a little bit about what the process often looks like in a fiction context?
Punske: Oh, absolutely. So you know, normally when we’re talking about a fictional context, we’re talking about, you know, needing human actors, I guess like Emily Blunt, but human actors to be able to perform these languages. And so we end up with aliens that have a physiology that is virtually identical to humans. I think, you know, Star Trek is such a great example of that, where you—everyone looks like a human, but maybe they have a slightly different thing on their head or ...
Feltman: Yeah, so many different kinds of nose bridges across the, the galaxy.
Punske: Exactly. Exactly. But their vocal tract is identical to a human. And, you know, obviously, and then they’re all speaking English because of the universal translator and things like that. But, you know, you need to have human actors that are producing these languages, so we’re gonna stay in the realm of things that are producible by our physiology. And more often than not, because these are being produced in the Western context, they’re gonna be utilizing the sound systems that are like languages that we find in Western European languages.
So that puts a pretty big limit on the types of things that we are, you know, looking at. And when we think about an alien context like Disclosure Day, the physiology of these other types of a potential alien species could be so radically different that we wouldn’t be able to necessarily produce those sounds.
Feltman: Yeah. Well, and just on the topic of the sounds being used, something I noticed about the little bit of alien language in Disclosure Day was that there was a lot of sort of popping and clicking, which you also see in the [Alien] franchise. And like you said, when we think about what makes a language sound alien, we’re often coming from this very Western context. Are there human languages where those sorts of sounds are actually used?
Punske: Absolutely. So there are languages that utilize click sounds. So these are sounds that involve a different type of vocalization where they, rather than pushing that air up through our lungs and, you know, producing the sounds that I’m producing right now, they use a differential air pressure within the oral track to sort of create these pops and clicks.
Now they also utilize those other sounds. So, like, you hear about these African clicking languages, they’re all languages primarily spoken in southern Africa. But they’re mixing these clicks into the sort of other types of sounds that we’d be very, very familiar with. So the types of clicking that we saw in the trailer is not like a human language where these clicks are much more occasional.
Feltman: I have a seven-month-old, and sometimes I stop and think about, you know, how obvious it is to me what sounds I’m making to him that are, you know, linguistic and which ones aren’t. I am a little concerned that I have got him believing that lip buzzing is, like, a really important aspect of our language, so we’ll see what happens with that.
But anyway, I would love to hear more about, like you said, how studying, you know, these fictional alien languages and talking about them can help us think more broadly about linguistics and about the search for alien life.
Punske: Sure. So I think, you know, starting with that first question of: How does this help us better understand linguistics? I think taking a step outside of what we know about humanity and what we know about the sort of languages that we’ve already encountered, the sort of universals that we’ve been able to identify and taking a step out and saying, “Well, what does that mean if we weren’t looking at humans? Are those gonna be the same types of things? Are those the same types of expectations?” That allows us to sort of better understand the limits and nature of sort of language within that human context. So I think that it really is helpful for us to be able to take that outside view and sort of look at things as if we weren’t just talking about humans.
And I think that’s, again, really what drew me to this idea of exploring alien languages. Obviously, some of the folks that are involved in this are very interested in the potential of communication. I’m definitely, uh, more on the skeptic side of that. But I think that does create some interesting questions about: What are the types of messages that might be receivable? What are the types of things that we would expect maybe, if we were to receive, that we’d be able to translate—and if a potential extraterrestrial intelligence was to receive, that they would be able to say, “Oh, yes, this is an intended message of communication”?
Feltman: Yeah. And what do you think that message could look like?
Punske: Probably mathematics. Some sort of mathematical operation, some sort of communication that is related to mathematical operations because we know that for them to receive a message, they would have to be probably through something like radio signals, so they would need to have developed a degree of technology that would require some sort of mathematics.
So there would need to be some sort of understanding of that, and that’s probably our best bet. But, you know, the types of messages we have sent, now these are not messages that are likely to be received, but you know, the Voyager plaque [the Golden Records] and things like that are much more representative and maybe things that are much harder for nonhumans to understand.
Feltman: I’m really glad that you mentioned math because we have a relevant clip from a recent interview. Basically, in Disclosure Day there’s a character who’s able to understand aliens essentially using math. And without giving too much away, there’s sort of this intermingling of like, deep, very human empathy and cold, hard math that facilitates interspecies communication. They’re kind of treated like two sides of the same coin. Our associate books editor Bri Kane talked to Disclosure Day’s screenwriter David Koepp about that in a recent interview. So here’s a short clip.
[CLIP: David Koepp speaks with Scientific American’s Bri Kane]
Bri Kane: I wanted to ask you, what do you think the true language of the universe is, empathy or math...?
David Koepp: Well, math.... I mean, there’s the famous quote is, you know, “The language of the universe is written in math....” But you know what? They go together, don’t they? Because to understand someone, you must speak their language. And if math is the language by which we are relating, don’t you need both?
Feltman: Just a reminder, listeners, you can check out Bri’s full Disclosure Day interview at ScientificAmerican.com or over on our YouTube channel.
So, Jeffery, what are some of your personal favorite constructed languages from fiction?
Punske: So I have a soft spot for Klingon.
Feltman: Don’t we all? [Laughs.]
Punske: [Laughs.] Yeah. My mother years ago gave me a copy of Hamlet in Klingon. It’s actually on the bookshelf back there; I moved it in this room for today.
So I have a soft spot for Klingon. Now, I haven’t studied them in, like, great detail. I’m certainly not one of these folks that can, like, speak a constructed language or use a constructed language. But I enjoy Klingon in part because it is designed in such a way to be so alien. So it uses object-verb-subject. It’s object first, which is unlike human languages. We like to put either our verb or our subject at the start of the sentence. So in Klingon you would say, “Pizza ate me,” which is very unusual.
It also utilizes a bunch of sounds that are done in a sort of unnatural way so it feels very alien. But, you know, you also have to go back and think about the [J.R.R.] Tolkien languages, the original behind the sort of construction of invented languages.
But, you know, I think it’s such a cool creative project for folks to do, to sort of think about developing a language that is completely disconnected from, you know, what we use in our day-to-day life and apply it to these sort of fictional settings. So I applaud anyone that really gets involved in that hobby.
Feltman: So if you were the guy there when we made contact with intelligent aliens, what would your first step be in trying to establish communication?
Punske: Oh, wow. That is such a difficult question. You know, I think it would depend so much on how the message was received. So, you know, if we think about these science fiction contacts, a ship lands and aliens walk out, well that’s gonna change the way that we try to communicate.
I think, staying in that sort of realm of science fiction, I think the film Arrival does a really great job of encapsulating the sort of linguistic processes that would occur within that. So you would try to establish just some basic naming terms, something that would allow for some degree of cross-language communication, and work from there.
Now if we received a radio signal, there could be a lot more planning involved and sort of decoding and preparing a message back. So I think it, you know, the nature of the contact would inform that so much.
I think one thing that is really important to think about with language, you know, when we look at human language, is that it’s modality nonspecific, which—so we normally think about language in terms of sounds and, you know, our auditory hearing or maybe reading. But signed languages, which use gesture and the visual system, are fully formed languages, and you can even have languages that are communicated through touch.
But at the same time, there’s modalities we don’t use. We don’t use smell, you know? And there’s no reason to think that [an] intelligent alien species may not utilize some of these other types of modalities that would make the sort of cross-species communication almost impossible or at least extremely difficult. Because the way that, you know, the olfactory system works is so fundamentally different than the way, say, the auditory system works. And, you know, smells linger in the way that sounds don’t or gestures don’t. So it would be a really interesting challenge if that’s the type of communication system that an intelligent species is using.
Feltman: Wow. I studied Mandarin in college, and as someone who wasn’t raised in a tonal language, the tones were very hard for me, I was always second-guessing myself. And now I’m just imagining that, but also trying to make sure that I’m producing the right smell at the right moment—terrifying.
Punske: Yeah, exactly. And then, yeah, the smells would stick around, so you could have, like, layered things that we just don’t have in human language. You know, you can get some layering, particularly in sign languages with facial and gestures, but nothing like you could get with an olfactory system.
Feltman: Wow, very cool. Thank you so much for coming on to chat. This has been really interesting.
Punske: Yeah. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. We’ll be back on Monday with something very special: a celebration of Scientific American’s first-ever class of Young American Scientists. Tune in to hear from a maverick astrophysicist about her journey from seeking theater stardom to studying the stars.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode featured additional reporting by Bri Kane and was edited by Alex Sugiura. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!
