Space Jockeys Speak

Nice; I reckon you are right with this. I think the David8 pages hint at quite alot of things.

I'd rather their communication goes through David than them talking a non believable language ... would've not wanted ANY chat to be honest ... but worst case? through David i suppose? ...

probably are advanced enough to "speak" telepathically or something similar...

Will David8 be as good as Google Translate?

He will be better than Google Translate, but not quite as good as George Lucas' gay golden butler. But more seriously....to follow up GEM's point, if David is the ONLY member of the crew that can sort of "converse" with anything they encounter, David will be able to claim anything he wants to the rest of the crew with respect to what the Alien(s) is/are actually saying to him.

we would need subtitles for the SJs to know that David was being machiavellan with the crew....;) I kind of hope they talk, and wondering how RS and teh production team would do it that seems authentic / ethereal, or whether they just go with silence perhaps there are no SJs in this film at all - all holograms (see another thread of David in the starmap room) - that would avoid the language problem altogether (maybe thats the avenue theyre leaving open for themselves - a sequel with coporeal SJs)

We we see one taking off in the ship so we know there physically are Space Jockeys around, it would be funny if David was just a dick... SJ "Welcome humans we invite you here to this place of peace and reflection" David "They said they have come to rape us and destroy earth! shoot them!!"

True Grindolf lol ... I'll rephrase that then ^ ... but I reckon he does interface with it somehow ...

I will not be surprised at all if David communicates (or even collaborates) with the remaining Engineer. I've analyzed all of the writing I can find in all of the clips available so far. There does seem to be one standard system in broad use throughout the Engineers’ environments and the glyph analysis suggests that the production may have even worked with a linguist. I see no reason for the orthography to exist as it does if the Engineers do not have a communication system [i]à la[/i] human speech. My analysis so far suggests the possibility of language with roughly the same number of phonemes as might occur in one of our languages. The "standard" system (disregarding the writing on the urns) would appear to be largely alphabetic and more intentionally DESIGNED than one that organically evolved over a long period of time. I think it [u]most[/u] likely that the writing was developed by one or more artists on the production, either with or without a direct relationship to a spoken model. Without more info, I just can't guess with any confidence. The writing appears in many different contexts: - The initial long test in the trailer that David puzzles over - The door frame into a new chamber in the complex as a control or label - The bottom of one of the opening doors - A door frame behind Ridley in the Featurette - On a sarcophagus (Near the "head" area) - In the Star Map The glyphs in the Star Map are in the same visual design vocabulary as the ones used in set decoration—to an untrained eye they [u]look[/u] the same—but they are informationally quite different. The way they are used in the Star Map they are each a single label (enclosed in a perfect circle). I find it convenient to think of them as "coordinates" and doing so allows me to create the back story that they are numbers. The number of variations there however suggests that IF they are numbers and numbers only, that perhaps the Engineers use a pure [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal]sexagesimal system[/url] for navigation. I'm not suggesting that this definitely IS the logic the production used, but it does seem plausible to me. What [u]likely[/u] happened is that someone in the art department who outsourced the creation of the Star Map to a 3rd party graphics house said something like, “The writing looks like this sample. Please keep it more or less consistent.” ;•) This brings me to the markings on the head. The left cheek seems to feature the "link constellation" that Shaw interprets from Earth’s pre-history and early literate societies as "the invitation." It makes sense that it would be right there on the face. “Yes, you've made it to the right place. You found us.” If they did not have David along with them, they likely would NOT quickly be able to communicate with the Engineers or their AIs. Any species with the ability to see and match patterns could easily get that correlation—even without "literacy” in the Engineers’ language. So, the symbology jives with my sense of logic. However, the rest of the tattoo-like markings around the "stars" and on the other half of the face do not seem to have a direct (linguistic) relationship to the “standard writing.” Like the symbols in the Star Map, they are of the same visual design vocabulary, and [u]evocative[/u] of writing, but they may not be representative of what we'd call "words." I personally find the idea that the sole surviving Engineer is mute (kind of like a Frankenstein’s monster) rather appealing, but that is not consistent with the work that seems to have gone into the writing as a function of set decoration and visuals in the Star Map. If the Engineer and David do actually [u]speak[/u] with each other I HOPE WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY EXISTENCE that they found a linguist who knows something about [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIE]PIE[/url], [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language]Sumerian[/url], etc. to consult. Every finger crossed.

hahaha - love it! how do you know thats not a mutated crewman - human or android - piloting the ship? weve noticed the size of the pilot looks a little small (and the helmut / carapace conveniently hides who or what it is)...unless there is something Ive missed that confirms otherwise?

@Phil ... Yeah good point ... Based on a possible fact that David can control the Holgram panel why not pilot the ship too? ...

He may have been just pissing around with it though like a kid and turned it on by mistake, maybe he was lucky he didn't shoot a lazer and kill everyone ... but that would have been a short movie

Well we see him playing with the green energy that the SJ either before or later in the film uses to activate the entire ship and fly into space before getting rammed by the prometheus

I will not be surprised at all if David communicates (or even collaborates) with the remaining Engineer. I've analyzed all of the writing I can find in all of the clips available so far. There does seem to be one standard system in broad use throughout the Engineers’ environments and the glyph analysis suggests that the production may have even worked with a linguist. I see no reason for the orthography to exist as it does if the Engineers do not have a communication system [i]à la[/i] human speech. My analysis so far suggests the possibility of language with roughly the same number of phonemes as might occur in one of our languages. The "standard" system (disregarding the writing on the urns) would appear to be largely alphabetic and more intentionally DESIGNED than one that organically evolved over a long period of time. I think it [u]most[/u] likely that the writing was developed by one or more artists on the production, either with or without a direct relationship to a spoken model. Without more info, I just can't guess with any confidence. The writing appears in many different contexts: - The initial long test in the trailer that David puzzles over - The door frame into a new chamber in the complex as a control or label - The bottom of one of the opening doors - A door frame behind Ridley in the Featurette - On a sarcophagus (Near the "head" area) - In the Star Map The glyphs in the Star Map are in the same visual design vocabulary as the ones used in set decoration—to an untrained eye they [u]look[/u] the same—but they are informationally quite different. The way they are used in the Star Map they are each a single label (enclosed in a perfect circle). I find it convenient to think of them as "coordinates" and doing so allows me to create the back story that they are numbers. The number of variations there however suggests that IF they are numbers and numbers only, that perhaps the Engineers use a pure [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal]sexagesimal system[/url] for navigation. I'm not suggesting that this definitely IS the logic the production used, but it does seem plausible to me. What [u]likely[/u] happened is that someone in the art department who outsourced the creation of the Star Map to a 3rd party graphics house said something like, “The writing looks like this sample. Please keep it more or less consistent.” ;•) This brings me to the markings on the head. The left cheek seems to feature the "link constellation" that Shaw interprets from Earth’s pre-history and early literate societies as "the invitation." It makes sense that it would be right there on the face. “Yes, you've made it to the right place. You found us.” If they did not have David along with them, they likely would NOT quickly be able to communicate with the Engineers or their AIs. Any species with the ability to see and match patterns could easily get that correlation—even without "literacy” in the Engineers’ language. So, the symbology jives with my sense of logic. However, the rest of the tattoo-like markings around the "stars" and on the other half of the face do not seem to have a direct (linguistic) relationship to the “standard writing.” Like the symbols in the Star Map, they are of the same visual design vocabulary, and [u]evocative[/u] of writing, but they may not be representative of what we'd call "words." I personally find the idea that the sole surviving Engineer is mute (kind of like a Frankenstein’s monster) rather appealing, but that is not consistent with the work that seems to have gone into the writing as a function of set decoration and visuals in the Star Map. If the Engineer and David do actually [u]speak[/u] with each other I HOPE WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY EXISTENCE that they found a linguist who knows something about [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIE]PIE[/url], [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language]Sumerian[/url], etc. to consult. Every finger crossed.

...or maybe Ridley will just plump for a bad italian accent, worked for George Lucas! In all seriousness, great bit of work there Sukkal - very interesting

That's a good point, CanadaPhil, David8 could keep some information away from the rest of the crew, for good or bad. That would add some intrigue to the story.

@JP There is a relatively new tendency for [u]serious directors[/u] to take the role of any "non-base language" in a film or series (specifically Sci-Fi of late) more seriously as a function of the overall richness of the “tapestry” of the production. In the big picture of the money that they spend, it is a TINY investment. But, I personally think it's worth it for a rock-solid sense of realism, and I always respect them for doing that (even though it may be an axis that is far outside of their own personal domain expertise).

I would be OK with the Space Jockey sounding a bit like the Mummy from "The Mummy". Nice, low voice. Convincingly foreign and ancient-sounding speech. Utterly menacing. But, please please please, no lengthy expository sequences where the SJ explains everything to David. Keep it brief. I get the impression that the SJ's are abut as interested in talking with us as we are interested in talking with snails. So maybe just a bit of untranslated angry yelling so show that they CAN speak, but choose not to waste their breath on inferior species.

@takka_takka_takka It looks to me like they've been pretty clever about the expository elements.......changing murals, ( perhaps ) recorded holograms....both of which could tell a story and/or convey important information in the visual language of film, without resort to tiresome "Trekkisms."

Nice write up sukkal ... good points ... I can see that would work ...