👽Summary:
This book is about a woman who is assigned to learn the language of aliens and then this experience changes her way of thinking- she is able to foresee what will happen in the future.
The book cleverly uses some physics to draw analogies and explain the differences in the way aliens and humans perceive and communicate.
The book is written in an interspersed way, interspersing the experience of learning the alien language with the story of the daughter, which is so novel that it becomes clear only at the end.
👽Questions to think about：
- How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
1⃣️ Aliens make sounds by vibrating the folds on their limbs.
Humans make sounds by vibrating their vocal cords.
2⃣️ Aliens have two language systems for speaking and writing.
（This separation of the two systems is only found in the human world in areas such as music.）
Humans have only one language system for daily speech and writing.
3️⃣ In the world of aliens, words are independent of each other and can be rotated and deformed at will without affecting comprehension, which may be related to their extremely symmetrical body structure. They indicate the reading order by means of speech marks and express different meanings by changing the shape of words. The changes in words all follow a certain pattern which is different from the changes in human calligraphy.
We humans, on the other hand, are linear.
4️⃣ The cognitive order of aliens is different from ours.
Their cognitive order is the first effect and then the cause.
We humans, on the other hand, are the cause first and then the effect.
In this way, aliens and our understandings of the difficulty are also the opposite.
2. How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
The body structure of aliens is extremely symmetrical; they are the same on all four sides. This probably makes them not care about the order of words during communication and able to arrange them in any way they want.
We humans, on the other hand, have a linear body structure. We are controlled by our brains to make sounds with our mouths. External language or words are also transmitted to our brains by our ears and eyes. This may determine our linear order of perception and communication.
👽Some thoughts：
Is it really good to foresee the future? The author asks a thought-provoking question in the book. Knowing the future can give us a sense of urgency to fulfill our obligations; but at the same time, I think, it also kills our creativity in life. So what is the point of living? Aliens can know the outcome first. The process doesn’t really mean much to them. All they have to do is to finish it. But we humans, in the current mode of thinking, can not know what will happen in the future, so we will work hard and enjoy every moment of our lives. Even though uneasiness and uncertainty often plague us, they are also part of our interesting life.
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