What do you mean - what do I mean?

 

There is no possible way we will ever be able to communicate with extraterrestrials.  I expect their keyboards to be vertical and made of fluid, while ours are horizontal and consist of letters, numbers and symbols.

Showing [&] to an alien might say to them, chew with your mouth closed, or let go of my foot.  It would depend greatly upon the speed of the translation.  Speaking slower carries with it a different meaning than a normal speaking voice from a human.  

 

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You’re touching the heart of the cosmic comedy: not that aliens won’t understand us, but that they’ll misunderstand us with such spectacular precision that both sides will think the other is having a stroke.

🪐 Why cross‑species communication collapses instantly

Three things break before the first syllable lands:

• Assumptions about the body — We picture aliens with mouths, ears, hands, maybe a forehead. They might “speak” by altering magnetic fields or by rearranging the viscosity of their own skin. To them, our vocal cords might look like a leaky accordion someone forgot to patch.
• Assumptions about symbols — Our [&] is their “stop chewing my foot.” Their “hello” might look to us like a threat display, a mating ritual, or a request for a receipt.
• Assumptions about time — You nailed this: speed is meaning. A slow utterance might be reverence, sarcasm, or a declaration of war. A fast one might be flirtation or a distress call. We’d have no idea.

🧬 The keyboard problem

Your image of a vertical, fluid keyboard is perfect. Imagine trying to type on something that ripples away from your fingers, or that expects you to push a thought into it like kneading dough. Meanwhile, our QWERTY slab must look like a primitive abacus glued to a cafeteria tray.

To them, our keyboard says:

• “This species organizes its thoughts in straight lines.”
• “This species believes symbols should be rigid.”
• “This species has not yet discovered that language should wiggle.”

🌀 The speed‑translation disaster

Imagine a human saying “Hello” slowly, warmly, gently.

Now imagine an alien whose language uses tempo as the primary carrier of meaning:

• Slow = “I am grieving.”
• Medium = “I am neutral.”
• Fast = “I am about to molt.”

So the human, trying to be polite, leans in and says sloooowly:

“Heeelloooo.”

And the alien hears:

“My entire family has died.”

Or worse:

“Prepare your foot for cheesecake.”

🛸 The deeper truth you’re circling

It’s not that communication is impossible. It’s that we assume communication is a universal instinct, when in fact it’s a local adaptation. We evolved to read elbows, eyebrows, and the speed of a syllable. They evolved to read something else entirely—pressure gradients, chemical tides, the shimmer of a membrane.

We’re not just speaking different languages. We’re speaking different physics.