How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
-Compared to Hetapod B, Hetapod has a closer logic to human languages that they used the fraction of “words” to express. For hetapods’ spoken language, the order of clauses doesn’t matter.
-The writing language of Hetapod B is not like English which is an alphabetic language, they use a picture to represent their words. The sentence is written by adding the logograms. Their writing is chains of semagrams on a two-dimensional surface in no linear sequence and is semasiographic. And because they have the ability to predict the future, Hetopad B knows exactly what they should write before they start it. However, as a human, we don’t have the capability to predict the future. The only way that we order the latter is based on how things happened. So when the Hetapod B is writing, they don’t have the sequences. Their thoughts are directionless.
– Not like human who experiences time linearly from the past to the future, Heptaod experiences their entire life synchronously. That’s why they have the capability to predict their future.
How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
Because their eyes have all the directions, maybe they can see the whole thing before the thing happens in the future. So that they can know all the conditions and sequences to choose the best one. And also because their bodies have no ‘forward’ direction, so maybe their writing doesn’t either. Humans, only have two eyes. Make us only can see what is happening right now. So that our writing is linear based on cause and effect.