How would we communicate with aliens if they ever reveal themselves to us?
What would aliens be like when we first meet them? Extraterrestrial life has been heavily fantasized and romanticized for decades but have we really got any idea how they would actually be in real life?
We recently wrote an article on a very curious topic question: ‘If Aliens Visit Earth Would It Be Like When Native Americans Encountered Columbus?’. We discussed several possibilities and scenarios of this first real contact and now we chose another curious question: “Would Advanced Interstellar Traveling Aliens Have a Global Language?”
Not that we have a reason to prepare for such an encounter for the time being (or maybe we must) but it is always a positive thing to combine logical thinking with imagination. Let’s discuss this question.
Alien Languages: What should we expect?
Taking into account the number of actively spoken languages in the world today, would all aliens speak a single language or would they have thousands as humans do?
Of course, this question can be looked at from different points of view. What if aliens cannot speak at all? Can you imagine an extraterrestrial civilization with the ability to travel through space with technology that humans would likely have in centuries (if ever) but without the ability to speak? I would personally laugh. But perhaps aliens will have other more advanced methods of communication. Telepathy maybe? But no, let’s assume that aliens can actually speak and have languages as this is why we are here right now.
On Earth, experts estimated that around 7000 languages are being spoken in modern days. This data is for 2019. Two years later, it is unlikely that this number has changed by a lot. However, these figures do not even include the dialects and you probably can get a good idea of where this leads to by taking your own language as a single example.
With this in mind, would it be possible that aliens in the vastness of space would have a single unifying language? I personally consider it unlikely.
How would it be possible for all aliens (and this is if we consider that there are many races or civilizations out there and not just one) to speak the same language? Maybe it could be possible but I consider it hard to accomplish.
For example, this would mean that aliens have been technologically advanced for thousands and thousands of years. If once each race had its own language, this would mean that they have had the capabilities for interstellar travel for ages.
Then, it would mean that the different alien civilizations have been interacting for long enough and have reached such an understanding (unrealistic for humans) that they accepted a single language as universal.
And still, even if it was possible for all alien civilizations to agree to this, I find it highly unlikely that all aliens know about each other. If one alien civilization knew about every other existing race in the universe and unified them all to use a single language, why haven’t they done the same to us? This would mean that they would also know that we exist (which is something I believe they do) but why haven’t they made that real contact we spoke of in the previous article?
Here is another possible answer that we can once again compare with life on Earth. What if there really is an intergalactic language used by all aliens while they also have their own local languages or dialects?
For example, here on Earth in modern days, English has already become a universal language. It is not an official language for all countries, in fact, it is quite the opposite but it is a language that is being used everywhere for everything.
Maybe interstellar traveling aliens have a global language like English that is being used by all different races. However, this would once again mean that all extraterrestrials are connected and unified.
With this said, for now, I would say no, aliens will not have a global language.
What if they can speak our languages?
Since we already mentioned English, here is another possibility that would definitely blow our minds if it actually happens. What if aliens come to Earth and suddenly start speaking English? Or Spanish? Or any other human language?
Maybe they have been studying us for so long that they have learned our languages too. Maybe it would be much easier to understand each other than it is presented in movies. If aliens are much more advanced than us, I definitely see it as a possibility that they can learn or have already learned our languages. How else would we communicate with them?
In the end, all we can do is wait and see. With our current technology, I do not see us going anywhere in the near future. In other words, we will not find aliens unless they are present somewhere in the Solar System. If we see them, it would be because they came to us.
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