The story of your life–Ted Chiang
The whole piece of fiction is interspersed with two stories. One is the story of the author’s communication with the aliens, conducted in a human writing style. The other is the story of the author and her child, recounted in Heptapod writing style.
When speaking, Heptapods’ pronunciation is different from humans. Humans cannot pronounce the word they said. So it is hard to communicate orally.
They write in a semagram style, their written language is a composition of complex symbols that convey meaning in a nonlinear fashion, which can be unordered. And as they can know the future, so they know how would the composition of their writing be before they write, which is impossible for humans.
The way Heptapod thought is also different from humans. When they said: “process create-endpoint inclusive-we”, means “let’s start”. When it comes to understanding the travel of light rays. They thought it was because the path that the light choose is the shortest and quickest for it to travel. They thought in a way that they have seen the future and the end before the action.
The physical structure of Heptapod is that they have seven limbs, which enable them to use a complex combination of symbolic characters. The structure also affects the way they speak, their vocal tract is substantially different from a human vocal tract so they pronounce differently from humans. In contrast, humans use nonverbal communication cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, to convey meaning and emotion.