#other human: *offended look* Bethany. I made BISCUITS *subtle gesturing to alien food*
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I love everything about this
Tbh this has been on my mind for MONTHS
Human codes… but they’re not actually codes??
A small group of humans is discovered by some curious aliens. Both sides can assume that the other is sentient. The aliens are trying to translate the humans’ language to their own, and the humans are trying to learn the aliens’ language. But since humans are tricky, they’ve decided that they don’t want the aliens to know their language, so they can have secret conversations.
So they go a little crazy. With written words, they randomly use lowercase and capital letters, even using numbers and symbols, and use a lot of slang, occasionally using words incorrectly on purpose. They’ll jumble the words a bit so that only human brains can guess their meaning (that thing where if you use all the letters and put the proper letters at the beginning and end it’ll be comprehensible), and even use additional or unofficial languages (commonly known words like ‘hola’, ‘si’, ‘oui’, etc, and piglatin, in which you typically take the first letter or syllable of a word, place it at the end, and add ‘ay’ to the end).
As for spoken words, they will do a bit of the above, mashing languages and slang, perhaps mispronouncing a few things, and quoting memes, vines, movies, and even singing parts of songs to throw off the aliens. Perhaps they will say something with a somber meaning in a joyful way to throw off the meaning, or even just naturally (‘I wanna die!’ ‘Mood’), or vice versa.
Additionally, there would have to be a TON of body language. Maybe even sign language, should they know any. Gestures and expressions, eyebrow wiggles and poorly-hidden grins. Ah, the beauties of communication.
#prev tags#I’m sure there’s more#please add more#aliens#humans#humans are space orcs#haso#humans are space fae#humans are space raccoons#humans are space orcs prompts#humans are weird#humans are insane#humans are terrifying#language#communication#lingustics#? I hope this counts as linguistics??#I’ve had this in my head for an unwritten fic I’ve abandoned before its birth#just humans being clever little pricks#aliens: hello humans! we wish to communicate! please speak as you naturally would!#human: ouldshay eway unray?#other human: *offended look* Bethany. I made BISCUITS *subtle gesturing to alien food*#another human: if I stay there will be trouble~ and if I go there will be double~ so I gotta gotta know~ should I stay or should I go#alien: are we sure these are all the same species? because I’m fairly sure they’re all speaking different languages
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