How do you explain a Language with Letters?

The hypothethis is as follows

say for example I wanted to write a "diary" for future civilzations..

how would I explain the english language with letters?

How would I explain this alphabet or meaning of words to someone illiterate of our roman letters?

I can not really think of a solution so far, except "drawing"...which is not a viable option.

furthermore it made me question how ancient runes are translated? only due to those people who were taught "both" languages??


looking forward to your ideas

say for example I wanted to write a "diary" for future civilzations.. how would I explain the english language with letters?

The problem is that language is an abstraction of thoughts and ideas.

A Sentence, Word or a simple letter is not "the thing" - it's only an abstract way we learned to communicate thoughts, ideas etc.

So..if you want to communicate with a future or alien civilization, you cannot use our/an abstract system . You need to find a more universal way, shortcut around the abstraction of language.

Images would be far better.

Edit: Well..you say "explain"...but in reality you would have to TEACH them..as you would have to teach a baby until it can read and understand language.

reply to post by flexy123


thanks for your answer-

I pretty much had the same thoughts you did....

but how would this universal language look like? i cannot really think of a way to communicate ? (cropcircles?!? :-D)

again - lets put into our hypotethis that "drawing" is not an option...is it simple impossible then?

You could just write your message down in Binary, simplest way to get the message across to any civilization that can count to 2. Mathematics is always the way to go.. Or they could just learn it by finding all of our texts and they start to notice patterns and the like. Some of the top physicists today talk about making English our "galactic" language, so really I doubt we'll have to try to write our texts in anyway to have a later civilization understand it. More than likely their language will be very similar... Unless we destroy most human beings in ww3

reply to post by Arekoteya


in "my" scenario this is the only text they find...


i like the math approach...i could facepalm myself for not thinking about it - although my grasp of binary is ...rudimentary to say the least.....

any idea how that would look like?

maybe megaliths are the way to go :-D

reply to post by Acetradamus


On what are you going to store the Diary on?
Paper?
Cd? Memory stick?

Because all of those will be useless after a couple of thousand years.

Stone tablets are the way to go.

reply to post by Acetradamus


Yeah if it's the only text they find it would definitely be a bit more difficult. It would have to Include a "key" with our whole Alphabet and numerical system spaced out then a message below and hope that they find the document completely intact.. Although the part that stumps me is how do they learn how the pronunciation of all of our phonetic words? I really believe math is the best way to go although binary will take up a lot of space to get a small message across. But if you would like to check it out for sh*ts and giggles there is some text to binary converters on the web. Morse code may be a good thing to I suppose... This is all just speculation I really have no idea what I'm talking about but I find it very interesting and have pondered the same questions a few times. Thanks for the post

brass plates with stamped binary texts stored hermetically sealed in a vacuum then encased in a more permanent casing, should make it a few millenniums

also pictographs could be useful.

reply to post by Acetradamus


Good question!

Letters are, in themselves symbols=drawings with a different individual meaning and purpose to it, that as a whole, gives it its meaning and value, and expresses (manifests) an idea, as already said.
The deeper study of letters, words and language eventually leads us to mathematics. Which is used to translate very old texts of 'dead' or unknown languages. So, it would be a hell of a job, to explain that first to any future people or entities, before starting your diary.

Other than this... well, as far as I can see, you're right... no drawings, no diary!

Keep on Truckin'!

Originally posted by CaDreamer
brass plates with stamped binary texts stored hermetically sealed in a vacuum then encased in a more permanent casing, should make it a few millenniums

also pictographs could be useful.

edit on 29-12-2011 by CaDreamer because: (no reason given)

That's probably one of the best ways I've heard recently to secure a message to future civilizations, I think I remember reading somewhere about the tombs and how they would open some chambers and it was like it had been vacuum sealed, maybe they were onto the same thing. Although that's probably just air tight chambers and the change of atmospheric pressure but it's always fun to imagine

I think that if modern scholars were able to decipher ancient texts, even when they didn't have a great volume of them to work with, then an alien civilization probably wouldn't have too much trouble translating English into "alien," especially with a large volume of text, and with some simple clues left, which could be images, etc...

thanks for the kind replies everyone - i appreciate it.

So this is kind of like a dead end - you cant explain a symbol with a symbol

I am not even sure how or what i would draw to explain abstract term like "he" or "TPTB" :-D

reply to post by Acetradamus


Maybe it is a dead end. But it does provoke the imagination and has me realize again, the complex limitations of articulate sounds we emit and call words and language.

Thanks for the post.