Conversing with an Alien
The Black Void - Episode 100
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If the alien's garment has a message in English on it, then you hope that
he will be able to speak the language as well. "Hello," you say to him.
(Actually, you have no idea whether the alien is male, female or even
neuter, but you decide arbitrarily to think of "him" as male.)
What might be a mouth, in the front of what might be his face, opens in what might be intended as a smile. "Hello," he says, in perfectly understandable English. His voice is high-pitched, which makes you wonder if your initial gender assigment was wrong. Then you reflect that, for all you know, in his species it could be that females have deep voices and males have squeaky ones. He goes on: "It's a long time since we've seen a human here." "And yet that welcoming banner is in English, as is the legend on your garment," you point out. "Naturally. English being the common language of half the galaxy is a legacy of your species' empire. Of course, it's now many generations since that empire collapsed, leaving most of your former colonies with little love for their erstwhile conquerors. But you should know all this already. Or don't they teach history on Earth any more?"
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JH
11/27/2004 1:54:28 AM
Extending Enabled
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