Arrival2016

Ian Donnelly:
Unlike all human written language, their writing is symbolic. It conveys meaning, it does not represent sound. Perhaps they view our form of writing as a wasted opportunity, passing every second communications channel. We have our friends in Pakistan to thank for their study on how the heptapods write. Because unlike speech, a logogram is free of time. Like their ship or their bodies. Their written language has no form or no direction. Linguists call this nonlinear orthography. Which raises the question: "Is this how they think?" Imagine you wanted to write a sentence using two hands, starting from either side. You'd have to know each word you wanted to use, as well as how much space they will occupy. A heptapod can write a complex sentence in two seconds effortlessly. It took us a month to make the simplest vocabulary.