I was thinking about the Sasquatch situation a bit more. I don't need to understand how the brain of a Sasquatch operates, I do need to understand the behaviour of the Sasquatch. There are perfectly good examples of "alien" communication such as the differences in dialects and accents among bees (For which Karl Ritter von Frisch (November 20, 1886 – June 12, 1982) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973).

Communication is necessary for the transferal of information between two or more interlocutors. It does not need to be verbal, but can also be pheromonal (bees), or in color, shape, and texture changes (caribbean reef squid). However limitations in the method of communication either means that communication is "simplistic" or demands the development of complex methods to go around the limitations of the communication medium.

Human beings use numerous means in addition to verbal to communicate with each other. The limitations of speech have demanded a consistency in phonemes, the development of core vocabulary and grammatical structures, to support communication.

Language is mutable, involving a sub structure of arbitrary rules between interlocutors to divulge meaning. If one was to look at the progression of language we see that words often evolve from concrete examples to the more abstract as necessitated by the culture and cultural memory of the language it exists in. This leads to the complexity of language.

Parrots use mimicry for defense (both blending and scaring off predators), but also for communication. For example Arielle, a Blue-and-yellow Macaw communicates ideas using a vocabulary of 4000 meaningful expressions. She speaks in several tenses, uses pronouns appropriately, attributes characteristics to animals and objects, and generally uses English correctly—she demonstrates a “Theory of Mind.�

Mimicry is a good foundation for the creation of a more complex multifaceted language in a similar manner as we would understand through music cognition.

It is possible that a secondary language would develop in parallel with verbal in terms of sign language. However there are several questions raised what would be the societal status of hand signals to that of emitted signals; the ability to understand abstract concepts; and how much has the environment instigated that change.

It is possible that Sasquatched lived in a hostile environment where mimicry of predators was the only way to survive. Mimicry would be used in communicating with other creatures, while sign language could be used as a private method of communication between Sasquatch. However as the number of predators decreased then mimicry would become first an enhacement to sign language to being its compliment. The mimicked sounds would originally indicate what they meant to their recipient but as time progresses the need for meaning shifts and we end up at the stage where it goes beyond mimicry and into the building blocks of language.

Chrysalis--Would you view Arielle's ability as an exception to the rule or the logical outcome for any parrot taught the same way?

I ask because in your summary for the transition from mimicry to language, it becomes important. Just as the sasquatches evolved to their environments with the development of sign etc as you postulated, it may take time for adaptation to an environment with metahumanity. If we presume a much faster evolution than normal (such as with the finches Darwin studied) then it may be possible for them to learn to communicate in as little as a dozen generations as a species. Meanwhile, specific sasquatches who have advanced beyond the genetic norm required for survival may, like Arielle, learn to communicate faster.

Thoughts?

Arielle's ability is not an exception, a similar species of macaw may be taught this way. Furthermore, a macaw if released into the wild will most likely teach others of its kind to do so. What has been noted in the papers I have read about animal communication, when comparing to great apes or dolphins, mimicry seems to give a greater edge in learning languages.

I would like to raise a controversial subject among linguists, and something my own stance is on is that what differentiates mimicry of a computer of human language from that of an animal mimicking human language is that an animal places a value on the sound being mimicked. An animal can make a choice when it is appropriate to mimic a sound, which means that the sound being mimicked by the animal also has meaning.

One of the key items with any communication learner is that if needing a communication method to survive, will learn that communication or if the communication is no longer effective will change it so that it is. That is true with bees, parrots, prairie dogs, as well as humans.

What was discovered with prarie dogs who had been studied is that they have distinctive communication models which they use to alert the rest of the group of changes in its environment, even specific warning calls for specific predators. During the study they played back warning calls to gauge the reaction of the group. A follow-up study of the same group six months later discovered that they had created another level of communication where periodic uses of identification between different prairie dogs was used. It meant that a warning signal from a different location than the identification was issued would involve a call for the identification of the prairie dogs in that area as well as from the originating prairie dog, a false alarm would follow a no-reaction from the group.

In a world with 7 billion people, the change in learning how to communicate may be abrupt and immediate. The first generation will retain the majority of its language, second generation will learn at least a core vocabulary and third will learn additional peripheral vocabulary. Fourth generation will be speaking the language as its native tongue but retaining grammatical substructures of the previous language and most likely will continue to do so for several generations after that (see studies on African-American speech patterns compared with West and East African dialects). Among Amazonian tribes who have moved from their traditional lifestyle to that of living in cities the change in language was quite abrupt, where the first generation retained its native language, but those who moved while young gained a native understanding of the language, and the second generation had effectively lost the majority of their tribal language and culture, replaced with the language and culture of their city.

As their cultural status increases it necessitates further knowledge and interlocutory powers over the language of the culture in which they inhabit. i.e. As a maid you do not need to know much of the language surrounding you to do your job, however as you progress to higher education it demands a better understanding, and succinctness of the language.

Individuals who learn languages past their genetic norm in an environment where survival is based on language, as it is in human society, will succeed better. It is a desirable trait, which will become stronger in succeeding generations (point raised by a guest speaker about the early evolution of man and speech in comparison with other hominids).

i did a quick read of the section in RC and it seems that they use audio to communicate between each other...

how about this, their brain is so well tuned to their range of hearing that to them human talk is what monkey grunts and growls are to humans?

basically their brains reject the very idea that those sounds can be some kind of language, as its not "refined" enough?

hobgoblin for the win!

-----

I'd buy that sooner than anything else. We humans often take for granted that we are the pinnacle of intelligence.

Too bad that their AR linguasoft - which they can undrestand perfectly well - tells them that they are wrong over and over again. So now instead of being illogical, they have to self-delude themselves into accepting what the AR tells them but not really believing it...

Crap.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112715/

swap the gorilla talking via sensor glove with a sachquatch talking via AR...

or how about this. long time development of their subconscious understanding of communication have been tuned so that they cant understand the verbal communications of man as just that.

hell, or own brain most likely do a fair bit of audio sorting before we start to figure that someone is talking.

and if the language was foreign enough (say japanese) im not sure i would pick it up as speech if it got tossed at me out of the blue. and thats human to human...

I think I like the explaination that they pay particular attention to all the differences in sound (as part of their mimicry) that they can't associate one person saying "hello" as the same word as another person saying "hello." Due to the difference in human voice and what not.

I don't see why they couldn't talk in a parrot like fashion, signing into their AR gloves, and having it play the words in order for the language they'd like to speak in their earphones, and them using mimicry to mimic the spoken sentence. But it would be a delayed process, and why bother when the commlink can just play the sentence for the other person anyway?

Dolphins can't speak a human language, but they've come pretty damned close to a form of "Sign Language" using body motion. Fins for arms, tail for legs.

It wouldn't be such a delayed process after they'd done it enough to no longer need the AR to feed them responses - they should be able to memorize quite a few, and if they take Eidetic Sense Memory or some other form of memory enhancement then the sky's the limit. Also consider that even if reception of the words get blocked by handwavium, the sasquatch could always learn to read the speaker's lips...

This comes from the dolphin being physically unable to produce the required sounds. Sasquatch most certainly DO NOT have such a limitation. The more important questions are whether or not dolphins can hear and differentiate the same range of sounds as humans and whether they can learn to understand a spoken language delivered in that sound range.

They probably wouldn't always be gramatically correct though. AFAIK sign language doesn't have gestures to differentiate between things like i went to the movies vs i'm going to the movies vs i will go to the movies.

However, the written language does, and we don't have any hard facts that deny literacy to sasquatch. Once again, with a highly-developed brain, they can make the connections and refine their responses - just as children do when learning a language.

Depends on the sign language. Sign Exact English does have all those words, while ASL (American Sign Language) does not. However that's because it doesn't use English grammar (since it's not English). I would translate it (for example) to:

Movies past time I go-to
Movies now I go (or Movies I go now)
Movies future time I go

(Disclaimer in case someone better at sign reads this: I'm not fluent, but I can get by.)

And for certain people talking about sign earlier in the thread (can't remember who it might be relevant to now), Sign Language actually uses the other half of the brain (as opposed to the half that handles "normal" language). In cases of brain injury when the individual lost their use of language, many times they retained the use of sign language if they knew it.

(Personally, when I've had a long day of dealing with idiots, by the time I'm done often times I have a hard time communicating in English, but can use Sign much easier.)

And I like AH's explanation. And whoever said that by 2070 obviously they have a scientific way to explain it (or perhaps it's something that is poked at in college labratories alot).

Edit: WOOT! I'm not a target anymore!

P.S. And children can learn Sign Language at a significantly earlier age and utilize it than they can verbal languages.

"My Hovercraft is full of Eels."

"My advantageous mongoose masturbates with abandon over your mother's skeleton."

*Heard over the night skies of England during the Blitz*
"My Thing is Bent!!"

WMS

Eh. It's one of those things where you just have to say "fuck it" to the written text.

Clinging to silly old rules about things simply because they're legacy, regardless of how stupid or ill-conceived they are (and doubly so when you're redoing the rules regarding them in other ways but leaving that crap in), is not a very good or logical argument for anything. They have rational minds, a good Logic attribute, the ability to understand and communicate, and the ability to create any sound they so desire. The only reason they can't, apparently, is "because that's the way it is in Shadowrun." Retarded.

You could argue that they don't use verbal communication by default for a number of reasons, the primary one being that they simply don't view sounds as a unique or viable means of communication amongst themselves. Sort of how humans don't, by default, rely on hand gestures for primary communication despite our ability to do so. But to say they simply can't and for no other reason than because "that's how it is in Shadowrun" is just asinine.

I agree the the Doctor in this matter.

Welcome back Doctor F you were missed.

WMS

Parrots can mimic human sounds and they communicate with each other, and yet they don't converse with normal conversation.

Look this isn't Star Trek where every alien can inconceivably speak perfect english when interacting with humans. The Sasquatch brain isn't worried to communicate with sound in anything but the most limited fashion. Just as we aren't wired to communicate normally with smells like many mammals do.

By the way strange neurological conditions somewhat similar do occur to people like Scott Adams and Spasmodic Dysphonia. It is perfectly rational to think that for non-human species it would be perfectly rational. After all most species have forms of communication but humans don't use our spoken language to converse with any of them.

Neanderthal Theory Here is an interesting article. Some of it is kind of kooky, but it describes neanderthals as having a kind of autistic intelligence. Autistic people often have a problem with a few aspects of communication as we know it. Things like not being able to understand body language and facial non verbal communication is common among autistics. The article theorizes that we could have inherited these traits from neanderthals.

Imagine a huge population of humanoid beings, who's intelligence are undeniable but different from ours. Who can hunt mammoths but can't throw a ball. Who can communicate but don't know if you are angry or sad unless you said so.

Many autistics can see an angry face, replicate it perfectly in a drawing, understand that that is what anger looks like and still not see it in a face. They can do maths as well as anyone, have normal cognitive abilities, but just cannot do some of the things we take for granted. Why? Because they just can't.

So yeah, I can see how a Sasquatch can communicate in all sorts of different ways but not verbally. There are people sort of like that among us, and we don't even have to make them up.

They can understand you. They can make sounds -- the exact same sounds and words you do. They can communicate freely and openly with no signs of retardation or mental illness.

If they lacked the ability to communicate. Lacked the ability to create any sound they wished. Didn't have strong Intuition or Logic attributes. Then sure, you could make a reasonable argument that they have some inherent inability to learn how to communicate through speech. But they don't. There's no reason for them not to other than "because that's just the way it is in Shadowrun." Nevermind that they, themselves, even use their mimicry ability to communicate with one another.

It's like saying a normal, average human can't use the "fuck you" hand gesture to tell you to, well, "fuck you." Why? Because humans communicate by speech, you see. So no matter how well he can make that hand gesture. No matter how many times he mimicks you doing it. No matter how many times you tell him what it means and explain to him when and when not to use it, he simply can't learn to associate that hand gesture with "fuck you." Because, well, "that's just the way it is in the real world."

We're not talking about rare outliers with legitimate brain disorders who have numerous handicaps as a result. They have the exact same Intuition and Logic scores as a typical human, are completely cognizant of the world around them, can literally say everything you do in exactly the same way, and are otherwise fully functional sapient beings. But "because that's just the way it is in Shadowrun," even though they can hear exactly what you say, you can't each teach them a damn thing. Domesticated pets are apparently more intelligent than they are.

Well, I don't pretend to know a whole lot about the subject, but many autistics can become angry and happy, they even look angry and happy, they can laugh, they can cry. Many of them exhibit no sign of mental retardation, some rare autistics excel at what the game would consider Logic, like Rain Man.

The real rain man has a job lives a normal life, can do anything you and I can do, some things much much better bordering on genius. But he still has a hard time telling whether you are happy or sad by your expression, but you can tell whether he is happy or sad by his expression. Non verbal communication is communication. He is real and there are others like him as well.

I think the big thing you're missing is that they use their Mimicry power to communicate with themselves, too. It's right there in black and white.

So, apparently, they can understand that "ooh ooh ahh ahh" means "my rubber duckie looks sad." But, for some strange and mysterious reason that AH refers to as 'because that's just the way it is', they can't learn that "my rubber duckie looks sad" means "my rubber duckie looks sad." They have to sign it. Even though they communicate verbally with themselves and, with absolutely no trouble whatsoever, can actually say "my rubber duckie looks sad."

Thus even though they can hear exactly what you say. Say exactly what you say. Can, in fact, communicate through sound and can, in fact, learn other languages... they can't. Even though they can. Because, well, 'that's just the way it is.' Sorry, but as previously mentioned, that's pure hogwash.

I'm quite content to say that they don't start the game with a free spoken language. That's cool and makes them more than interesting enough. But to say they can't is beyond dumb and, to be honest, is just a cheap gimmick to give them something that stands out. As if being a huge fur-covered monster wasn't enough. If they had some real, solid reason why they couldn't, that'd be different. But their intelligence, their ability to communicate, and their ability to hear and recreate any sound they choose AND that they use that same ability to communicate anyway... epic fail.

Hmm, yeah seems like they could have gone farther with that concept. Kind of reminds me of my grandmother. She lived in the U.S. for twelve years. People around her spoke english, her kids and grand kids spoke english, she tried to go to adult classes to learn English. She would repeat what I say in English and I would translate it to Thai for her but it just didn't stick. She wasn't dumb by any means but after twelve years of being immersed in it, still could only speak a few words.

And since she grew up in small ethnic group in China, moved to Thailand and had kids who grew up there, who then moved to the U.S. where I was raised, she really seemed like she had an "alien" intelligence to me.

It is not a cheap gimmick. The only problem if there is one is in making them playable characters where they should probably just remain very interesting NPCs. Give us good enough information on the race and a creative game group can make it playable on their own if they really want to and don't need to buy a book that tells them it is okay.

Look most animal species and even many non-animal species on the planet communicate. Humans are the only ones we know of so far that do it with WORDS. So what is so strange about a Sasquatch being the same as every other (millions or billions depending on how you slice) species on the planet?

Now if you really want to you could play a Cockatrice, the books just don't explicitly spell it out for good reason. It would take a whole book to explain how to roleplay and GM a cockatrice setting so some things just aren't worth causing this kind of trouble. Heck in Lord of the Rings Online you can play a chicken which then can't communicate with all your regular friends playing a humanoid. There are no game police to enforce what you can or can't do in your own setting.

Mimicry, full-on sapience, and human-level mental stats are the big ones along with the fact that, as Dr. Funkenstein pointed out, they do use a form of spoken communication amongst themselves. I think those qualities (not specifically Mimicry, but it helps too) push the sasquatch far closer to the human than to any other of the millions of species on the planet.

The reason why I brought up animal communication instead of human language is that if Sasquatches are so different than we would need to look at different types of animal communication instead of human languages. As has been pointed out animal communication and human language are different. I would also point out that discrete lexical markers exist in both animal communication and human language. The major difference I perceive between animal communication and human language is that human language is able to deal with the abstract and unknowable.

Strong auditory learning with wide vocal ability give rise to a powerful trait to be able to learn language quickly. It does not mean the Sasquatch thought patterns have changed with the power of mimicry, but is utilizing the mimicked discrete lexical markers as correlating symbols to the original Sasquatch language.

However one should be careful in knowing that mimickry does not mean understanding of context. An aeroplane may convert into Sasquatch as a giant bird, and may give rise to questions such as "are they good to eat" or "are they dangerous".

Most likely Sasquatch uses an hyper-adoptive verbal expression for vocabulary expansion, and human languages may cause too great a change to the original Sasquatch language for the changes to be adopted. Furthermore with additions of discrete lexical markers to a language means also changes in modes of thought, which may endanger the unadulterated language forcing a limited cultural contact to avoid any further contamination.

The issue I perceive is that human communication and presence is massive on Earth and this leads to a situation where even animals have adapted themselves to survive inside of human culture. The cultural shock of changing from a nature oriented hunter-gatherer culture to one of extensive human contact with its technological marvels would be a massive one. Furthermore limitations of language and using communication devices would leave them at a severe disadvantage to the human population and to their existence outside of curiosities.

An AR based dictionary would involve at least 20 years of study to be able to correlate say English expressions and context into Sasquatch. It would still mean that the dictionary would be erroneus as both languages develop over that period of time.

As a quick addendum: I do not think anyone will continue with this train of thought. We all want to play elf strippers with big guns, and not necessarily delve into the wonderful, but mystically realm of language acquisition. It would, nonetheless, be interesting to see how many linguists are there are here on the forums.

that again walks into the trap that the sasquatch brain and the human brain is wired the same.

also, adults always have a harder time learning new things then young ones...

so unless you can get hold of a saquatch young, and raise it as a human child, one would not know...

Heres another answer... Because, they're magical beings. Supernatural, just like casting spells and the astral plane. You let those exist "because shadowrun says so" and for the same reason, sasquatches can't speak.

OK folks, how about this...

The High Foreheads in Shadowrun of 2070s haven't figured it out after decades of research and testing. How the hell are we primitive screwheads supposed to even come close to figuring out an answer?

This is kind of a silly argument. At my table, we've joked about how strange this is a bit. But we keep it. Not because we're slaves to the books or anything like that. We keep it because it's actually interesting. It is a strange quirk, and a significant part of what makes sasquatches not just big hairy dudes.

Personally, I like the idea that a sasquatch who can mimic enough english (or another language) to communicate would be unique and strange. But they wouldn't have their own voice, or their own personal inflection. It's just mimicry. They're going through the motions, but it's not really natural to them. I don't know enough to make up the pseudo-science to justify this, but that's ok. I'm not a zoologist. It doesn't bother me.

But if it really bothers you, then assume that most sasquatches can learn the language. It won't break anything. It's certainly not worth hurling insults over.

Well not always.

I was in Boot Camp long ago, a fellow recruit in my squad, joined the USN already fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Russian. During the course of 8 weks of Boot he learned Spanish so well that he had the local accent/dialect down. When he spoke to some of the family of a native speaker, his Spanish speaking unnerved them. He was a short stocky blonde California surfer kid.

What was his planned career ie NEC in the USN Crypto Tech Interpretative, he left Boot Camp with a Top Secret Plus Clearance, and went directly to the Defense Language Institute in Monteray, Ca.

WMS

It's not like they CAN'T communicate with Metahumanity, it's just that it takes a bit more for them to do that.

Hey, guess what, mute Metas are the same way! I'm sure the Tech built for Sasquatches were really started out for them!

Anyhow, Sassies are a pretty easy-going bunch for the most part, and great at parties, so they sound weird, big deal! I'd allow one in my group!

For one thing, be a damn good way to have a biological method of breaking voice-recognition systems!

crypto? sounds like a knack for maths as well then. how able to think on his feet was he?

They have their own language, can mimic our language, they can understand our language through translation, but have a mental block to learn it. A lot of humans have this problem, why is it beyond reason that a totally imaginary being has it too?

Autism anyone?

becase this:



is a fairly unknown issue in a world where english is becoming more and more a world language...

or to put it a different way, if your first language is english, you rarely have a real need to learn more of them...

ignorance is bliss and all that...

may be, altho autism in popular culture are one of two kinds, the biological computer, and the screaming demon that could just as well pass for adhd these days...

thanks for the "help", hollywood...

Well he was not one to get demerits unlike myself and others.

WMS

Let's face it we all secretly want to play a wookie.

I'm not aware of any humans who can speak a language fluently, can exactly duplicate and perceive every word you say, have the capicity to associate those words with concepts, and have the capacity and (important part here) desire to learn a new language but... can't?

No, I'm not aware of anyone like that in the real world.

There's many who can't learn to communicate well for a variety of reasons. Even the example earlier in the thread of an older person not learning a second language demonstrates more of the "set in my ways" mentality rather than any kind of "physically and mentally unable to do so" handicap. But there's no solid and, more importantly, believable reason why sasquatches are barred from ever learning a spoken language. They have the ability, they have the desire, they have the mental and physical requirements. But they can't. Because "that's just the way it is."

If they didn't commuicate verbally at all I could almost be convinced that it was beyond their capabilities. But the fact that they can and do completely nullifies any arguments to the contrary as far as I'm concerned.

Furry lovers. All of us.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish you were someone else.

My take on the situation (as if you cared, right?) is that Sasquatches lack an intuitive method through which they can group different pronunciations of phoenemes. In humans, I would think that imperfect mimicry leads to grouping all the variations on pronunciation based on vocal output when attempting to replicate them, and this allows a human to turn various pronunciations into the same word-concept reliably. A sasquatch has the capacity to mimic sounds perfectly, so their neurological representation of sounds is a lot more nuanced than a human's. This prevents them understanding spoken language, because they don't group two different people saying the same word, as they get produced differently in the vocal system of the Sasquatch.

A Sasquatch can mimic the output of a Linguasoft appropriately, but it won't be able to understand what other people are saying because it doesn't turn the same word spoken by different people into the same concept. They would still be reliant on a Linguasoft to interpret what other people are saying and a language skill represents the ability to speak the language without assistance, mechanically. If you have to rely on a Linguasoft to enable you to speak a language with natives, you can't represent that by giving the character a skill because their language ability is bottlenecked on the quality of the Linguasoft.

They could learn the associations between different people speaking the same word and the word itself, but they'd need to learn each and every person's voice independantly. This is far more work than most people are willing to go to in order to learn a language, especially when you can buy some software that does it all for you.


It seems that many people are assuming that Sasquatches can do humanlike sound to word-concept association. This does not seem possible when they lack natural vocalisation grouping mechanisms.

Not only would they need to learn one persons voice, but learn it happy, sad, sleepy, angry, etc and all the vocal inflection that goes with it.

If you cannot imagine it, does it mean it doesn't or can't exist? Is it a limit of imagination or existence?

If you can't explain it, is it less real?

That Mimicry power must be pretty useless, then, if they can't use it for anything aside from directly copying something. If they don't know when or how to use it, such as associating it with situations or targets, then what's the point in even having it as a note-worthy critter power? It would be little more than a random-noise-making power. Nevermind that they do, in fact, use the power to communicate verbally.

I knew someone that just couldn't learn a language even though she tried to. Yeah, she was set in her ways, and she was old but that represents a psychological and physical reason why she just couldn't.



How could there be, it's all made up!

You're misreading my intent, it seems. I never argued that Sasquatches are incapable of reading context, I argued that they are incapable of identifying words spoken by two different speakers as the same word because they have a different set of sound-similarity tolerances due to the fact that their vocal system allows for much more accurate mimicry and mimicry forms the basis of linguistic capability.

A Sasquatch is capable of understanding context just fine (duh, human-normal Log and Int), but their understanding of audio context is far more nuanced and precise than a human. This extends to the point that languages based on a human audial understanding allow too much variance for the Sasquatch to piece together the phoenetic basis.


They would still be able to learn how voices change when the subject is undergoing certain emotions, but the actual changes in how particular lingual elements are sounded would be distinct enough that the Sasquatch would be unable to understand them as the same element spoken under a different emotional outlook.