“Doko, koko wa?”
“Umm… parlez-vous francais? Je ne parle pas…eum… la langue…”
“Que idioma -hablo espanol? De France?”
“Erm… Do-Donde… soy… Je ne peux pax parler vos langue, desolee. J’ai etudie quand j’etais une fille mais… merde.”
“Fuck this shit. Fucking aliens, what a bunch of asshats.”
“Hontouni, dare? Dare?”
“Can you just-“
“Amerikajin? Eigo! Eigo wo -eto, watakushi -I -English? Furanzugo mo, kedo…”
“Yes! Yes! What -um… what language?”
“Ano… No English, sorry, bad …ano… chuugakusee… eto… su- su-tu -dame da ne!”
“Oi, que pasa? Que mierda?”
“Iha kithē hai…?”
“Bāng bāng wǒ!”
“Neih sīkm̀hsīk góng gwóngdùngwá a?”
“err… Je croix…. tous nous… um.. to- nos, um, todos… merde.”
“Ah! Eto.. Furanzugo.. fu-ran-seizu… wo…eto… je peux…”
Xrgl’l paused the hologram. The humans froze, their primary expression generators alternately slack in what the anthropologists had deemed confusion or twisted up in a clearly negative emotive state. From what the anthropologists were saying, their body language, while universal, seemed secondary to their aural fixation. Moreover, each group had appeared to evolve separate phonations, perhaps as a way of distinguishing the in-group from the out-group. The greatest evolutionary pressure this super-predator faced was from others of the same species. Unlike his species, Xrgl’l thought. Community ecology theory, previously held to be the natural order of things, had been upended by these primitives, as the Higher Galactic Media often referred to them. Xrgl’l privately thought -or as privately as was possible, given the tendency to transmit thought through posture -well, any species advanced enough to split the atom couldn’t be that technologically primitive. Sure, their application of it was… misguided… but there was something almost endearing in their violence.
Xrgl’l sighed. If the humans couldn’t be made to tolerate, or even communicate, outside of their own groups, then the live-capture program would probably be discontinued. It was a niche area of study already, and the Greater Learning System had been looking to divert the resources to the more popular areas of anthropology -namely, the tech and domestication route. Humans had proved highly trainable, though it had been noted when same-location-breed humans came together the result was almost inevitably rebellion, death and disaster.
It had been a domestication case that had initiated Xrgl’l’s interest in the communication habits of these odd bipedal creatures. Breeding programs experienced low success, not least because of the low rate of sexual dimorphism in the species, which made it difficult to determine which humans belonged to what sex. Interestingly enough, while studies had shown at least five different sexes apparent in human biology, most humans appeared to sexually react to only two or three, and not always in a pro-reproductive manner. Thus, it was considered a resounding success when a breeding pair, under the care of a planet-bound family, produced a whole two infants from the same egg-sperm unit. Enough was known about the biology to allow for a healthy birthing, but what happened afterwards had shocked the scientific community.
The infants, while not initially capable of complex communication, developed at an astounding rate. Doted on by the family, they were taken everywhere, with one or both parents usually insisting on accompanying them, even once the infants were autonomously mobile. The family, later recalling the affair, remembered the parents leaning in, placing their eating orifices near to the children’s auscultation orifices, then having the children do the same to them. It was when the children began developing signs of human adulthood, and the parents signs of aging, that the effect of human intelligence had been seen.
An escape attempt -dramatic in its recounting -had resulted in the entire family unit making it off-world. The children had enough knowledge of life-support systems to communicate required protections to their parents, and in turn, their parents had enough knowledge and ability to transmit human culture that they were able to instruct their children in the art of secrecy that, had the weight sensors not detected an extra mass during the unloading, they would have been able to disappear into a cross-species urban asteroid, with their owners none the wiser.
Such attempts had been made before, but what had prompted not just anthropological communication experts but the media and scientific community as a whole to take notice was the post-recapture. The children had rudimentary language ability, enough to plead for their parents lives. The children had, of course, been immediately confined to a language laboratory, along with species that had displayed similar abilities. The parents, in a display of the human parent-child bond, had refused all food until they had been allowed contact; by that time, the children had apparently lost all language skill, even that which they had previously used to communicate, in a human dialect, with their parents. They refused to show any positive body language outside of each other, and maintained contact until, again through refusing food, they died.
Science had truly lost the beginnings of a great discovery that day.
The idea that humans could be taught to communicate with society at large was an enticing one. Obviously they lacked certain physical structures needed for true language, but they certainly seemed intelligent enough. And Xrgl’l, along with other humans-rights-activists, thought that if humans could be observed communicating between themselves, a translator of sorts could be devised, and if a translator could be devised, then the humans could communicate their own needs, and explain some of the strange habits of humans.
Xrgl’l fast-forwarded through the hologram, to the point an intern had highlighted. Xrgl’l would review the entirety of the hologram, but as long as there was an intern, might as well make use of it. Xrgl’l played the recording.
“Jaa… kanji ga aru, no ne…”
Three of the humans were huddled together, fingers touching the ground. They had been kept in a nanobot infused environment; what appeared as soil was a mix of planetary matter and recording devices. The scrapings were deliberate and patterned, and were almost pictographic in nature.
“Tous vous pouvons parler?”
Another human, probably an XX female, though it was hard to tell without a physical examination, was using positive body language and seemed to be moving through groups. She, as she emitted noise, also drew on the ground, though hers was more elongated. One of the three -the smallest, most likely pre-sexual -stared at the markings, then slowly rubbed a similarly elongated form into the dirt.
“Eto… yukkuri.. yukkuri… ano…” The human’s limb movements suddenly became slow. Body language!
Xrgl’l stopped it and turned on the hologramitron to put thoughts into record. A breakthrough! The drawing could possibly be related -humans had been known to put abstract visual patterns, thought to contain meaning, on everything from their food to their weapons. Perhaps the program could continue after all!
RED. RED. EXTRUDER ALERT. HUMANS ESCAPING. EXTRUDER ALERT. RED. RED.
The hologram message had popped up on the table behind Xrgl’l, who didn’t notice it.
Sumimasen, nihongo wo amari chaberarenain desu.
Desolee, je ne parle pas francais trop bien.
Mi espanol no es beuno.
I had to google translate for Mandarin and Pashtun, and find a Cantonese phrasebook. So please excuse any errors on that end. Originally written for this prompt.