So I worked in television and film most of my adult life - and time, budgetary and "good enough" are always the enemy of complexity. The truth is, if Arival was going to have really fleshed-out Heptapod-B, it would have required more time and more money - the two things you pretty much never have enough of. I think they struck a pretty darn good balance of a unique, alien-looking written language that serves its purpose in the film - without having to literally pay to have someone (or likely multiple people) to design a far more complete language. I certainly didn't notice it in the many times I've watched and enjoyed the film - so I think Villeneuve did 'enough'. Interesting you've done pieces on many of my favorite filmmakers already; Eggers, Villeneuve, Cohen brothers. Possibly something interesting for a future film - Pizzolatto's use of language in conveying a philosophy of Nihilism in Season 1 of True Detective.
Great point about the budget...please tell Denis that in the future I'll make him a language for free. Also, you clearly have good taste as TD S1 is a masterpiece. I'm taking that under advisement, thank you. A great excuse for a rewatch.
@@LanguageFilm I agree with both points. A. not every film needs Tolkien's attention to languages and, B. TD S1 is fantastic! (with perhaps the exception of Ep. 4 :-/)
I think there was a wisdom in choosing art instead of hiring a linguist to conceive a new language, for the simple reason that linguists, no matter how creative, are constrained by needing to create some kind of knowable meaning. The point of using these abstract shapes is to defy our attempts at translation, to suggest that only an alien mind can read them, and so by learning to read them, the protagonist's mind becomes alien. That can't be done the way they did Klingon language. It has to be untranslatable to some degree. The logos also make me laugh because, from the standpoint of anyone who works with ink, They're clearly made with the rim of an ink bowl dipped in ink and pressed onto the paper, a few dry-brush strokes, and air blown on the puddles with a straw till they dribble outward into those spidery patterns. A simple but effective way to to create an endless series of circular abstracts.
If you assume that Heptapod B works like Paleo Hebrew then its meaning becomes clearer (a good example is with "Ian and Louise must go") The film alluded to the fact that it works like Paleo Hebrew in the scene where you see the software plotting points on the logogram and listing all its meanings... So in the example, part of the logogram would not just translate to "Leave" but instead "Leave, Go, Depart, Exit, Relocate" and so you would take ALL of those meanings and combine them, so it cannot mean "Ian leaves Louise" or "Louise leaves Ian" and can only mean "Ian and Louise leave"... Presumably there would be a more specific logogram that would equate to "Leave, Abandon, Desert, Forsake, Discard, Dump" which would more accurately denote "Ian leaves Louise". As soon as I saw this film, I knew Heptapod B was actually an analogue of Paleo Hebrew.
"writing down something in a circle doesn't necessarily make it non-linear" - I liked this comment and it showed how the movie can help non-science nerds put together this great film; it's for everyone, but if you go deep into the science.. it's mind blowing.
I think the inconsistencies of what component appears in a logogram is interesting. If we just accept that inconsistency as that’s the design, then ‘mom’ has ‘heptapod’ while ‘child’ has ‘solve’ might indicate they have different process or ritual or just connotation of reproduction than us
Actually, Chinese, Egyptian, and Sumerian were mostly phonetic, but you are correct that they did start as logographic, though almost certainly in a proto- or early-writing phase. Some call them logophonetic, but to say they were "logographic in nature" ignores their fundamentally and widespread phonetic "nature" early on. For Chinese the estimate is that 80-90% of characters are phonosemantic compounds-- including a pronunciation component (very predictable at the time of Old Chinese) and a determiner (radical) that suggests the class of the word (man, woman, place, wood, speech, water, fire, etc.). In many cases, an abstract term is represented very early by a logographic item with a similar pronunciation, distinguished solely by the determiner. Likewise for Sumerian (3500-3000 BCE logographic, limited to use in accounting, but phonosemantic by 3000 BCE) and Egyptian (phonetic at the very start, fully formed as phonosemantic by 28th C BCE). Mayan appears to work similarly, but I have to depend on 2ndary sources. Examples: In Classical Chinese, 青 is a combination of 生 "plant life" + 丹 "cinnabar", which came to mean "the color of growing plants, i.e. blue/green". With a "water" radical on the left, 清, it means "clear", which word has the SAME pronunciation in OLD Chinese (and today, for this word). 請 (请) "please/favor" [with the "speech" radical] differs only in tone today. Similar strategies obtain in Sumerian and Egyptian, with the latter especially transparent. In Egyptian, 𓋹 ankh is the ubiquitous word for "life", but (a) it is usually spelled out phonetically as well [as: "ankh" + "n" + "kh"] AND (b) the symbol originally meant something concrete with the same pronunciation, either a sandal strap or some kind of knot (no, it's not a cross).
just a thought , but maybe they dont need grammar because they experience time a different way and they see the things anyways? with these images popping up in their head? idk thank you for your explanation i love when someone is so dedicated and goes in detail!!
From my perspective, it seems that seeing the future (literally) is not required to create heptapod B logos. It's more accurate to say that one must know what their complete thought is. The logos do not show the future, they show complete thoughts as one symbol. Also, although the story in the movie (and the book?) shows literal knowing of the future, I think for viewers the more relevant version is the equivalent of knowing that if we see a two year old walking around a dining table in a small dining room carrying a butter knife, it's almost 100% sure that they will stick it in an electrical outlet. We don't stop to think of the events in order...our brain says, "get the butter knife from them. Move them to another room. Distract them with something else." The lesson is to expand that type of awareness to more complex areas of our lives. An effortless awareness of the preciousness of our lives, and of everything in it. Appreciate each moment with every single person in our lives, because somehow, in some way, each shared journey will end.
It is sensible to use a circle to write nonlinearly. I’m not sure if it applies to everything they say but when Costello is asked about Abbott after the explosion they say Abbott is death process Is death process Abbott Death process Abbott is Process Abbott is death Works backwards and forwards and wherever in the sentence u start from
Thanks for a great analysis. Really appreciate the amount of effort that you have put in researching the language elements. Even though I have seen Arrival twice, this video highlighted a unique and previously unknown aspect of the movie, which actually enhanced the experience. Thank you for that. I disagree that a culture in which time is not experienced linearly, will not have a concept of now. There are a lot of eastern traditions in which time is treated as an illusion and the reality is considered as one continuous block. Still they emphasise on the importance of change within the block. It is the observation of change that puts importance on experiencing the now and not really the causality of changes.
When Louise says "it wasn't us" 'it' refers to an explosion. Perhaps the more correct translation is "explosion not ian/louise". With the other symbol indicating an explosion and as stars explode there is the connection. The distance between the symbols of the logo gram could indicate a separation or distance from the event. Either way, rad video.
Thank you very much for this video, I enjoyed it. I have seen the movie several times, every time with a new glimpse of knowledge and understanding and I am currently dived into the topics of time :-) So the logogram language with no time meaning is just part of my thinking :-)
Finally someome else commenting on the superficiality of it! But you missed another interesting combination. In "Louise must choose life" (or smthn) it reads LOUISE (CHOOSE) LIFE+LOUISE suggesting something like a specification. Another interesting thing I noticed was a lack of pronouns. Whenever a translation listed a pronoun, a morpheme that was equivolent to a name/noun was used - suggesting a lack of pronouns. The "was not" morpheme is indeed annoying. THOUGH one thing you failed to analyse was that it is made pretty explicitly clear in the film that they use some level of reduplicative grammar with spaces number of repetitions and empty space used as grammatical functions. This would only apply to larger texts, of which we see only one or two throughout the whole thing and seeing as the basics of the language are kept specifically vague, there probably isn't much there to analyse indipendant of what the film tells us. A lot of wasted opportunity... hope someone fleshes it out into a usable conlang one day. Maybe Arrival 2 could👉👈🥺. (Also please put subtitles on i had to listen really hard to catch everything (I'm Hard of Hearing))
Hi, thanks for the comment! Sorry for not adding captions to this one! I usually do, but I didn't with this video...however, I will be sure to do so from now on. I did notice "louise" was duplicated in that one morpheme you mentioned, but I was thinking that (given all the recycling of symbols) it might have just been a mistake. I think you may be right, though, and it may have some grammatical function. But when I noticed that in the "Louise Ian Eat Apple" logogram the morpheme for Louise has been copied and pasted and then covered with some ink to make it look different, I threw up my hands! I do appreciate the effort they made with some consistency, but I agree with you...it was a wasted opportunity. There's no reason why an artist AND a linguist couldn't have worked together on it! :)
@@LanguageFilm Don't know about you but I am dying to get my hands on the 100 word dictionary... but I don't even know how to begin on doing that. The Louise+Ian thing is kinda cute tbh. In my analysis I got cheeky and called it "grammatical shipping", so its less Louise Ian eat apple and more "Loian eat apple". It could also be an allusion to them being a couple and the Heptopods can see thst through time so therefore treat them as two parts of a singular entity. When I a wiser woman (*cough cough* have actually finished my linguistics degree and am not just a student poking at THE conlanging goliath with a stick *cough cough*) I will endevour to make this language usable!!!
@@water594 You know the heptapods have a morpheme for "ship" but I don't think they're using it the same way you are. :D I think you could probably rework Hepta B now...no need to wait...you already know more about language than the heptapods do, apparently. Or better yet...just learn from your analysis of it as you embark on your own!
@@LanguageFilm Problem is I need a way of generating new charatcers (morphemes). I'm planning on getting a drawing tablet, so maybe once I have that I can do it
Personally I was really annoyed that the movie kind of ignored the nob-verbal way of communication. Which is weird considering one of the main themes is the importance of communication and many ways in which words can be interpreted and misinterpreted, because it's totally the same for gestures isn't it?! The main character cares so much about this whole "weapon" thing yet when she met the aliens without knowing anything about them she took off her hazmat suit like it's no big deal?? Like imagine if you met a sentient life form previously unknown to you and suddenly it starts to take off something that might or might not be a layer of their body?? Some bare their teeth to smile and some to threat and if you're on a diplomatic mission it is absolutely crucial to be sure if you're doing the first or the second and if the context allows it.😤
Why am I not shocked that a Hollywood film doesn't get (any) details correct? Have you watched the first Jason Bourne film? Did you see the 'Cyrillic' on his supposedly Russian passport? How much effort would it have taken to get that right? About 10 minutes.
That sick heptopod tattoo that you think says "Always Question Authority" actually means "No MSG added"
So I worked in television and film most of my adult life - and time, budgetary and "good enough" are always the enemy of complexity. The truth is, if Arival was going to have really fleshed-out Heptapod-B, it would have required more time and more money - the two things you pretty much never have enough of. I think they struck a pretty darn good balance of a unique, alien-looking written language that serves its purpose in the film - without having to literally pay to have someone (or likely multiple people) to design a far more complete language. I certainly didn't notice it in the many times I've watched and enjoyed the film - so I think Villeneuve did 'enough'.
Interesting you've done pieces on many of my favorite filmmakers already; Eggers, Villeneuve, Cohen brothers. Possibly something interesting for a future film - Pizzolatto's use of language in conveying a philosophy of Nihilism in Season 1 of True Detective.
Great point about the budget...please tell Denis that in the future I'll make him a language for free. Also, you clearly have good taste as TD S1 is a masterpiece. I'm taking that under advisement, thank you. A great excuse for a rewatch.
@@LanguageFilm I agree with both points. A. not every film needs Tolkien's attention to languages and, B. TD S1 is fantastic! (with perhaps the exception of Ep. 4 :-/)
I think there was a wisdom in choosing art instead of hiring a linguist to conceive a new language, for the simple reason that linguists, no matter how creative, are constrained by needing to create some kind of knowable meaning. The point of using these abstract shapes is to defy our attempts at translation, to suggest that only an alien mind can read them, and so by learning to read them, the protagonist's mind becomes alien. That can't be done the way they did Klingon language. It has to be untranslatable to some degree.
The logos also make me laugh because, from the standpoint of anyone who works with ink, They're clearly made with the rim of an ink bowl dipped in ink and pressed onto the paper, a few dry-brush strokes, and air blown on the puddles with a straw till they dribble outward into those spidery patterns. A simple but effective way to to create an endless series of circular abstracts.
Well I think it’s a good visual representation of the one from the book
If you assume that Heptapod B works like Paleo Hebrew then its meaning becomes clearer (a good example is with "Ian and Louise must go") The film alluded to the fact that it works like Paleo Hebrew in the scene where you see the software plotting points on the logogram and listing all its meanings... So in the example, part of the logogram would not just translate to "Leave" but instead "Leave, Go, Depart, Exit, Relocate" and so you would take ALL of those meanings and combine them, so it cannot mean "Ian leaves Louise" or "Louise leaves Ian" and can only mean "Ian and Louise leave"... Presumably there would be a more specific logogram that would equate to "Leave, Abandon, Desert, Forsake, Discard, Dump" which would more accurately denote "Ian leaves Louise".
As soon as I saw this film, I knew Heptapod B was actually an analogue of Paleo Hebrew.
"writing down something in a circle doesn't necessarily make it non-linear" - I liked this comment and it showed how the movie can help non-science nerds put together this great film; it's for everyone, but if you go deep into the science.. it's mind blowing.
I think the inconsistencies of what component appears in a logogram is interesting. If we just accept that inconsistency as that’s the design, then ‘mom’ has ‘heptapod’ while ‘child’ has ‘solve’ might indicate they have different process or ritual or just connotation of reproduction than us
Actually, Chinese, Egyptian, and Sumerian were mostly phonetic, but you are correct that they did start as logographic, though almost certainly in a proto- or early-writing phase. Some call them logophonetic, but to say they were "logographic in nature" ignores their fundamentally and widespread phonetic "nature" early on. For Chinese the estimate is that 80-90% of characters are phonosemantic compounds-- including a pronunciation component (very predictable at the time of Old Chinese) and a determiner (radical) that suggests the class of the word (man, woman, place, wood, speech, water, fire, etc.). In many cases, an abstract term is represented very early by a logographic item with a similar pronunciation, distinguished solely by the determiner. Likewise for Sumerian (3500-3000 BCE logographic, limited to use in accounting, but phonosemantic by 3000 BCE) and Egyptian (phonetic at the very start, fully formed as phonosemantic by 28th C BCE). Mayan appears to work similarly, but I have to depend on 2ndary sources.
Examples:
In Classical Chinese, 青 is a combination of 生 "plant life" + 丹 "cinnabar", which came to mean "the color of growing plants, i.e. blue/green". With a "water" radical on the left, 清, it means "clear", which word has the SAME pronunciation in OLD Chinese (and today, for this word). 請 (请) "please/favor" [with the "speech" radical] differs only in tone today. Similar strategies obtain in Sumerian and Egyptian, with the latter especially transparent.
In Egyptian, 𓋹 ankh is the ubiquitous word for "life", but (a) it is usually spelled out phonetically as well [as: "ankh" + "n" + "kh"] AND (b) the symbol originally meant something concrete with the same pronunciation, either a sandal strap or some kind of knot (no, it's not a cross).
*When your coffee mug leaves a stain on your script and it becomes the official inspiration of the visual representation of the language in your film*
just a thought , but maybe they dont need grammar because they experience time a different way and they see the things anyways? with these images popping up in their head? idk
thank you for your explanation i love when someone is so dedicated and goes in detail!!
From my perspective, it seems that seeing the future (literally) is not required to create heptapod B logos. It's more accurate to say that one must know what their complete thought is. The logos do not show the future, they show complete thoughts as one symbol. Also, although the story in the movie (and the book?) shows literal knowing of the future, I think for viewers the more relevant version is the equivalent of knowing that if we see a two year old walking around a dining table in a small dining room carrying a butter knife, it's almost 100% sure that they will stick it in an electrical outlet. We don't stop to think of the events in order...our brain says, "get the butter knife from them. Move them to another room. Distract them with something else." The lesson is to expand that type of awareness to more complex areas of our lives. An effortless awareness of the preciousness of our lives, and of everything in it. Appreciate each moment with every single person in our lives, because somehow, in some way, each shared journey will end.
It is sensible to use a circle to write nonlinearly. I’m not sure if it applies to everything they say but when Costello is asked about Abbott after the explosion they say
Abbott is death process
Is death process Abbott
Death process Abbott is
Process Abbott is death
Works backwards and forwards and wherever in the sentence u start from
Thanks for a great analysis. Really appreciate the amount of effort that you have put in researching the language elements. Even though I have seen Arrival twice, this video highlighted a unique and previously unknown aspect of the movie, which actually enhanced the experience. Thank you for that.
I disagree that a culture in which time is not experienced linearly, will not have a concept of now. There are a lot of eastern traditions in which time is treated as an illusion and the reality is considered as one continuous block. Still they emphasise on the importance of change within the block. It is the observation of change that puts importance on experiencing the now and not really the causality of changes.
When Louise says "it wasn't us" 'it' refers to an explosion. Perhaps the more correct translation is "explosion not ian/louise". With the other symbol indicating an explosion and as stars explode there is the connection. The distance between the symbols of the logo gram could indicate a separation or distance from the event.
Either way, rad video.
Thank you very much for this video, I enjoyed it. I have seen the movie several times, every time with a new glimpse of knowledge and understanding and I am currently dived into the topics of time :-) So the logogram language with no time meaning is just part of my thinking :-)
how about a extended analysis
Toei says that the extraterrestrials arrived in Japan uses logogram resembles hiragana, katakana, and Japanese kanji.
you’re examples of “differences” in definition of the word system seem to have the same definition, being applied to different situations.
Finally someome else commenting on the superficiality of it!
But you missed another interesting combination. In "Louise must choose life" (or smthn) it reads LOUISE (CHOOSE) LIFE+LOUISE suggesting something like a specification.
Another interesting thing I noticed was a lack of pronouns. Whenever a translation listed a pronoun, a morpheme that was equivolent to a name/noun was used - suggesting a lack of pronouns.
The "was not" morpheme is indeed annoying.
THOUGH one thing you failed to analyse was that it is made pretty explicitly clear in the film that they use some level of reduplicative grammar with spaces number of repetitions and empty space used as grammatical functions. This would only apply to larger texts, of which we see only one or two throughout the whole thing and seeing as the basics of the language are kept specifically vague, there probably isn't much there to analyse indipendant of what the film tells us.
A lot of wasted opportunity... hope someone fleshes it out into a usable conlang one day. Maybe Arrival 2 could👉👈🥺.
(Also please put subtitles on i had to listen really hard to catch everything (I'm Hard of Hearing))
Hi, thanks for the comment! Sorry for not adding captions to this one! I usually do, but I didn't with this video...however, I will be sure to do so from now on. I did notice "louise" was duplicated in that one morpheme you mentioned, but I was thinking that (given all the recycling of symbols) it might have just been a mistake. I think you may be right, though, and it may have some grammatical function. But when I noticed that in the "Louise Ian Eat Apple" logogram the morpheme for Louise has been copied and pasted and then covered with some ink to make it look different, I threw up my hands! I do appreciate the effort they made with some consistency, but I agree with you...it was a wasted opportunity. There's no reason why an artist AND a linguist couldn't have worked together on it! :)
@@LanguageFilm Don't know about you but I am dying to get my hands on the 100 word dictionary... but I don't even know how to begin on doing that.
The Louise+Ian thing is kinda cute tbh. In my analysis I got cheeky and called it "grammatical shipping", so its less Louise Ian eat apple and more "Loian eat apple". It could also be an allusion to them being a couple and the Heptopods can see thst through time so therefore treat them as two parts of a singular entity.
When I a wiser woman (*cough cough* have actually finished my linguistics degree and am not just a student poking at THE conlanging goliath with a stick *cough cough*) I will endevour to make this language usable!!!
@@water594 You know the heptapods have a morpheme for "ship" but I don't think they're using it the same way you are. :D I think you could probably rework Hepta B now...no need to wait...you already know more about language than the heptapods do, apparently. Or better yet...just learn from your analysis of it as you embark on your own!
@@LanguageFilm Problem is I need a way of generating new charatcers (morphemes).
I'm planning on getting a drawing tablet, so maybe once I have that I can do it
Great
Personally I was really annoyed that the movie kind of ignored the nob-verbal way of communication. Which is weird considering one of the main themes is the importance of communication and many ways in which words can be interpreted and misinterpreted, because it's totally the same for gestures isn't it?! The main character cares so much about this whole "weapon" thing yet when she met the aliens without knowing anything about them she took off her hazmat suit like it's no big deal?? Like imagine if you met a sentient life form previously unknown to you and suddenly it starts to take off something that might or might not be a layer of their body?? Some bare their teeth to smile and some to threat and if you're on a diplomatic mission it is absolutely crucial to be sure if you're doing the first or the second and if the context allows it.😤
Why am I not shocked that a Hollywood film doesn't get (any) details correct?
Have you watched the first Jason Bourne film? Did you see the 'Cyrillic' on his supposedly Russian passport?
How much effort would it have taken to get that right? About 10 minutes.
Now try the inconsistencies of the english language.
who is here from the story of your life
Star and wasn't is different look carefully
emojis
ɢᴏᴏᴅ sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ɢᴏᴏᴅ sᴄʀɪᴘᴛ ʙɪɢ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴛᴜᴅᴇ ᴠɪᴇᴡs sᴜʙs ʜᴀᴠᴇ ғᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ
THANK YOU IN LAUGH PROCESS