The heptapods' written language is not isomorphic to their spoken language. It's kind of like Chinese characters on steroids, except that the Chinese writing system maps very closely to the language it was designed to write. Louise finds that each sentence forms a single super-logogram, with the various component logograms stretched, rotated, and smeared together. The logogram was odd: after some study, I could identify graphic elements that resembled the individual logograms for "heptapod" and "gourd." They looked as if they had been melted together, with several extra strokes in the mix that presumably meant "eat." Was it a multiword ligature? The sound spectrograph for "gourd" changed when it was used in the sentence possibly a case marker. Flapper talked and displayed a large logogram on their screen. Then Raspberry brought the gourd down between its legs, a crunching sound resulted, and the gourd reemerged minus a bite there were cornlike kernels beneath the shell. It appears logographic, but it's like no writing system on Earth. This is cumbersome, so she adds a video screen and shows the heptapods (who she's named Flapper and Raspberry) that she wants to try to learn their writing system instead, hoping that it will be simpler. She points at objects to learn what they're called, and also mimes a few simple actions such as eating. She tries a few times to immitate their voices, without success, so she conducts the entire procedure by rearranging and playing back recordings of the heptapods' utterances. Fortunately, the heptapods are cooperative. Louise, armed with recording and playback equipment, begins a monolingual discovery procedure. They appear to talk out of an orifice at the top of their bodies. Called "heptapods", they look like barrels supported by seven legs, and have seven-sided radial symmetry. When approached, it activates, and shows a semicircular room somewhere else, presumably inside one of the ships. It appears to be a large semicircular mirror resting on the ground. She's taken to one of the strange objects that have been appearing in meadows all over the world. She proposes to learn their language by interacting with them, and so joins the project. She can tell that the aliens' vocal tracts are vastly different from humans', but she can't say much more than that-especially since the colonel won't even confirm that she's listening to a recording of alien speech, let alone describe their anatomy to her. Not surprisingly, Louise can't make anything out of it without any context. The recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking water out of its fur. "All I can offer is the recording," said Colonel Weber.Ĭolonel Weber took a tape machine out of his briefcase and pressed PLAY. I presume this has something to do with the aliens?" "You said you wanted me to listen to a recording. They've got something they want her to hear. Louise is contacted rather suddenly at her university by an colonel and a physicist. Ships arrive in orbit above the Earth, and strange artifacts being to appear all over the world.
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