Communication Issues with Aliens - Is this a realistic solution?

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

Ok, so say that a species of aliens has been discovered on Titan. Unlike us humans, these aliens do not have voice boxes to communicate. Instead, they have an organ somewhere in the back of their throat that can produce clicking noises. Each click can have varied and unique tones to it, much like the tone that is made every time you push a button on a landline phone.

To cover the communication barrier gap, both humans and aliens learn Morse code. The humans carry around something like a dog clicker so that they may respond to any Titanian's conversation. (Although I imagine that would grow to be needlessly complicated. Or would it come to be an essential item to carry around in the world?)

Is this a realistic solution?

[Purple]

Morse code is not suitable for this at all. It's just a way of encoding human letters. So unless the aliens are willing to learn a human language it won't help much. They'd be much better off developing a clicker that can actually produce the alien clicking noises and integrating it into a handheld device that does translations automatically in a text-click-text format.

[Zixinus]

To cover the communication barrier gap, both humans and aliens learn Morse code. The humans carry around something like a dog clicker so that they may respond to any Titanian's conversation. (Although I imagine that would grow to be needlessly complicated. Or would it come to be an essential item to carry around in the world?)

Is this a realistic solution?

Morse code is not useful here, it's there for latin character-set and only has two components. Very useful when you have technological limitations on English communication, but aliens wouldn't know what to do with it. They'd have to learn written English to use it (a very tall order, almost impossible without a third party's help) and even then, it would be very slow as the aliens would have to click out every letter. Their own language would probably much more faster and allow better expression.

The problem with your assumption is that just because they communicate by clicking you assume that their components are simple and limited. I can create several different clicks with different tone too just with clicking my tongue at different places on the roof of my mouth. There are human languages that can feature clicks.
Your standard phone's tonal signals can be combined very rapidly in complicated ways. Just think music on a percussive or wind instruments: you are hearing a series of fixed sounds in various rapidity (even without doing things like going polychromatic).

The quickest hands-on solution would be for humans to make the aliens create a pidgin version of their language that can be programmed into a computer. Then their handheld computers can be programmed to record and reproduce the appropriate sounds in proper succession. An AI may take on the role of translation. Which is pretty much the usual solution for most alien-human communication scenarios that doesn't involve either AI communicating or telepathy.

If you want to be fancy or creative a bit, you can create fancy musical instruments, even mechanical ones like a xylophone, that can imitate their sounds to some extent (do note that the aliens would probably have lots of refineries in the creation of their clicks, such as a hard or soft click).

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

Morse code is not suitable for this at all. It's just a way of encoding human letters. So unless the aliens are willing to learn a human language it won't help much. They'd be much better off developing a clicker that can actually produce the alien clicking noises and integrating it into a handheld device that does translations automatically in a text-click-text format.

They probably could, but there's so many of them it'd take a pain staking amount of time to learn, and not all of the essentials of the human language would be able to be incorporated into their educational system.

The quickest hands-on solution would be for humans to make the aliens create a pidgin version of their language that can be programmed into a computer. Then their handheld computers can be programmed to record and reproduce the appropriate sounds in proper succession. An AI may take on the role of translation. Which is pretty much the usual solution for most alien-human communication scenarios that doesn't involve either AI communicating or telepathy.

That's a good idea.

[Simon_Jester]

Here's the question:

How do the aliens' actual languages work? Do they have only one clicking sound, or many?

If they have only one clicking sound, their natural language will probably consist of a vocabulary where each word is part or all of, say, a sixteen-bit string of clicks. Each word is associated with a unique string. Common words will probably usually have shorter strings.

The aliens won't even have a concept of syllables or alphabets, because the only 'letter' in their 'alphabet' is "click." All their words would be spelled "click click click click..." with differing lengths of pauses between the 'clicks.'

(Note that it might actually not take that much longer to say things in this language, if the aliens are very good at judging the precise length of a split-second time window).

However, the consequence of this is that it'd be very difficult if not impossible to teach them written English. All languages with alphabets or syllabaries are based on the idea that words break down into a small number of discrete "sounds." For the Titanians, the smallest indivisible unit of language is the word, not the syllable or the letter. Breaking up a word into letters would make no sense to them.
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On the other hand, if the aliens have a variety of different clicks (you used the analogy of a touch-tone phone which has ten), then it's likely that each click corresponds to a 'letter' in their 'alphabet,' and words are much shorter strings of clicks built up out of individual instances drawn from that 'alphabet.'

In which case communication is relatively trivial assuming both parties use electronic aids to do so, which they'd probably have to since humans and Titanians presumably can't breathe the same air, let alone live together without use of technology.

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

How do the aliens' actual languages work? Do they have only one clicking sound, or many?

They can only make one definite clicking sound. However, they can change the tone and pitch of the click so that it sounds completely different, and in a sense become its own sound.
Sort of like altering a sample from a song so that it sounds different from when it originally started. But at the end of the day, it's still the same song. Just presented in a different form.

[Jub]

How do the aliens' actual languages work? Do they have only one clicking sound, or many?

They can only make one definite clicking sound. However, they can change the tone and pitch of the click so that it sounds completely different, and in a sense become its own sound.
Sort of like altering a sample from a song so that it sounds different from when it originally started. But at the end of the day, it's still the same song. Just presented in a different form.

So we'd think of it like plucking a single string on a guitar and using frets to make different pitches?

[Korto]

The quickest hands-on solution would be for humans to make the aliens create a pidgin version of their language that can be programmed into a computer.

Yeah, let's not put Zixinus in charge of the First Contact diplomatic corp, OK?

[Khaat]

Or maybe we should learn dolphin first. After all, sounds like the Titanians might just have more in common with them.

Why is it we so quickly spring to "make them work with our language of choice"? Why English? Why not ASL (concepts, not letters), or a less-common, more systemically similar language we have on earth?

[Purple]

Because the end goal is, or at least should be to permit large scale sharing of information and culture at some point down the line. Steering them on a worthless tangent whose only redeeming quality is that it might be marginally easier as a starting point is not conducive to this.

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

So we'd think of it like plucking a single string on a guitar and using frets to make different pitches?

Basically.

And regarding the problem of which language to use, maybe Chinese would be easier to learn, since it doesn't have an alphabet?

[Lord Revan]

well chinese has a lot of words that sound nearly the same with minor tonal differences and writing system for chinese is a lot more complex then the western alphabet (in general you need to learn about 30-40 marks for western languages and about 1000 to even begin to understand chinese or other language that use similar system).

You kind of need a language that is reasonbly simple and phonetic

[Purple]

So we'd think of it like plucking a single string on a guitar and using frets to make different pitches?

Basically.

And regarding the problem of which language to use, maybe Chinese would be easier to learn, since it doesn't have an alphabet?

What you seem to be missing is that the language as you described it does have an alphabet. Each type of click is a letter.

[Khaat]

What you seem to be missing is that the language as you described it does have an alphabet. Each type of click is a letter.

And this "code" could be translated, but not transliterated; it isn't a simple substitution, like Morse.

[Khaat]

TLDR: No, it's not a realistic solution.

You are either well on your way to a "universal translator" (magic "does hard thinking for us" box), or someone will have to deign to step down and learn the other creatures' language (as well as they can).

[Simon_Jester]

How do the aliens' actual languages work? Do they have only one clicking sound, or many?

They can only make one definite clicking sound. However, they can change the tone and pitch of the click so that it sounds completely different, and in a sense become its own sound.
Sort of like altering a sample from a song so that it sounds different from when it originally started. But at the end of the day, it's still the same song. Just presented in a different form.

So in other words, they can make a lot of different clicks. Where "different" is defined in terms of frequency and other measurable things.

Well, then, the most likely form of spoken language for them would actually be a lot like ours, only with discrete 'clicks' making up each 'syllable' of their 'words.'

Assuming Titanians need about the same size vocabulary as earthly languages, they need about 20000 to 100000 words. If they can only make four different distinguishable 'click' sounds, then their shortest and most common words would be about, oh, five or six 'clicks' long, because that gives them 4^5 or 4^6 syllables (one to four thousand). Bigger and more obscure words would tend to be longer, probably up to a maximum of ten or twelve clicks (not all possible combinations will be used, of course).

If they can make more distinguishable clicking sounds (say, ten), then they need considerably fewer clicks to make up a word- every word in the English language could be encoded to a string of at most five or six clicks. The encoding would be arbitrary (sort of like how Unicode translates just about every imaginable letter or symbol into an arbitrary hexadecimal number), but it'd be doable.

In either case, different cultures may have different numbers of syllables, and use different-sounding 'clicks' that are not shared between language groups. This would be just like how on Earth different languages have different syllables. Chinese and English are both designed to be spoken with the same set of vocal cords and work equally well, but they're totally different languages that have been evolving independently for something like ten thousand years or more.
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It would be relatively easy to translate English into such a language; computers could synthesize the clicking language very easily. The biggest problem is that you'd lose all the structural similarities within words of English- and you'd probably have to construct arbitrary rules like "to indicate a plural, add a click-type-three at the end of your noun click-string."

[biostem]

If both races are technologically advanced, then a way of translating each other's language via something like a smartphone app shouldn't be too difficult. Now, while these Titanians may not be able to replicate human speech, it is not impossible that some skilled human individuals may be able to adequately replicate the clicks. Heck, if the aliens have human-like forelimbs, then perhaps sign language would be a good intermediary language...

[Zixinus]

A minor point that just occurred to me: instead of just trying to learn the language in a first contact scenario, a pictogram-based language would be more useful to develop to start off with. A simple chalkboard would be not a bad start. Learning appropriate symbols and concepts may be useful. It would definitely help in having something to talk about as well as create context.

The problem with an alien language isn't just the clicks, that's more of a small problem of just recognizing the appropriate sounds. The problem will be making sense of them. With aliens whose mind and communication organs developed differently, they may have concepts and ideas of language so wholly unlike our own that they may not form words, sentences, grammar like us. You could have a situation where you know can distinguish between clicking and even have an idea what they mean, but cannot make any sense of it because it does not meet your ideas of linguistics.

[Ziggy Stardust]

What about the alien's hearing? What about their sight? What about their smell? You speak only about their capacity for producing vocal signals, but what about the rest of their communication? Even if we assume that every other sense besides hearing is irrelevant to their communication, the auditory components of their anatomy and neurology would be vastly different than ours. If they can only produce a relatively limited range of signals, but are intelligent on the level of humans (as you imply), then it is likely their auditory pathways process and deparse signals in a different or more complex way than our own. Are the aliens like whales, where the click is only the portion of the signal that is within human hearing ranges, but much of their own communication occurs at much higher and lower frequencies? Would they even be capable of processing human speech without some sort of technological filter, the same way we can't hear most bat vocalizations without special equipment?

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

Heck, if the aliens have human-like forelimbs, then perhaps sign language would be a good intermediary language...

While they do have human like forelimbs, they only have two fingers and a thumb on each hand. So a modified version of sign language would have to do so that the lack of two extra fingers is not a problem.

Are the aliens like whales, where the click is only the portion of the signal that is within human hearing ranges, but much of their own communication occurs at much higher and lower frequencies? Would they even be capable of processing human speech without some sort of technological filter, the same way we can't hear most bat vocalizations without special equipment?

Yes. Their hearing is very fine tuned to hear clicks above and below the human hearing range. They can hear human speech, but it sounds... garbled. It wouldn't make any sense unless a filter sorts it out for them.

What about the alien's hearing? What about their sight? What about their smell?

As said earlier, the Titanians have very good hearing and can distinguish small pauses in their clicking languages. Their sight is good at recognizing different shades of color, probably going back to their primitive days where they needed to be able to tell if the plants they were about to eat were fit for consumption. This was indicated by the color of the plant, which changes depending on how healthy it is. Other than that, their eye sight is not the best. Everything for them is blurry, kind of like having astigmatism.
I'm not sure about their smell, to be honest. Either they can't smell at all, or if they can it's worse than the human's.

[Corvus 501]

If we're on Titan at all, we would by definition be using comm gear of some type. Making an app for suit speakers to translate is a logical step. Of course, setting up the helmet HUD to provide exact translation of what you're saying in English in comparison to what your saying in clicking may be useful, at least until humans start to grammatically understand the language in question.