when reading this novella I was absorbed by the way one of the main characters – Dr Louis Baker – was trying to establish contact with the aliens and learn about their way of communicating. I found particularly interesting the fact that heptapods were experiencing events and how time worked for them: instead of perceiving life in a sequence of events and thoughts, they “felt” all the events at the same time, simultaneously. this drastically differs from the way humans experience life and reflects the difference between ours and their’s language.
as for the way their language is structured, for me it occurred to be somewhat similar to Chinese: chains of semagrams on a two-dimensional surface for written language and another language for speaking. although the key difference is that the spoken language does not have any reference to the written, whereas in all human languages, as far as I know, language that we write with always somehow relates to what we are saying. moreover, the pictographic language that heptapods used as the written way of communication was way more complex than Chinese as it embedded almost inconsistent grammar structures.
speaking of the appearance they had that was described in the novella, heptapods have radically symmetrical features, including eyes pointing in all directions, which reflect their way of experiencing events in a non-sequential manner. there is no such thing for them as looking “forward” or “back”, which also refers to their way of communication in the written language as they follow the rules of their unique visual syntax. humans, in contrast, have an imperfect symmetry: though we all have a pair of eyes, arms, legs, ears, the two sides of our bodies are still not the same. we use our arms to point at things, express using common gestures and even our facial expression often conveys a variety of emotions. this change of body positions and face reflects the way we experience life as well: we live and think in a certain sequence.
again, I would like to talk a bit more about the relationship with the future that these aliens had: their way of perceiving events was drastically different as it followed a non-sequential path. this made me think about if our brains can reach that level of awareness of both the future and present. I keep wondering how that ability could change our behaviour and the way we communicate our thoughts. but that is for another post.