Venusian n. 2

‘Bal-un-deva-jas! Dev-ut-al!’ he grunted in two weird syllables, addressing the others. Immediately they began to discuss some event in their Venusian language that sounded to Tyber like the senseless grunting of a hog. But he was pleased to learn that they had some means of vocal communication. He was eager suddenly to learn it as he had learned many languages on earth. It seemed preposterous to him, however, that such brutes could speak.

A babble of voices came to me. Most of what was said, being in Venusian, was unintelligible, but presently I found a man who could speak Earth English—he had made one or two trips to our planet—and through him I was able to communicate.

Antil shrieked with delight when he saw these objects and for the first time since Karl knew him, lapsed into sibilant Venusian gibberish. [...] ‘It is a complete document in our ancient ceremonial language. Up to now we have never had more than disjointed fragments. This is a great find.’

She bent her smooth fair head becomingly and began in a low, clear voice to chant as well as she could in Venusian to the tune of a very old drinking song of Earth, once the battle anthem of a nation that had fallen long ago.

All the Earthmen had learned Venusian quickly; they were good linguists, having been chosen for this as well as other transplanetary virtues.

She could answer Thor, turn aside his quiet pleading, because she spoke to him in English. Her own language had made it possible for her to confuse word-symbols with ideas. But by questioning her, by driving her into a semantic corner, Kraela had forced her to admit her own lack of idea-referents. She could not phrase her argument in Venusian, because the argument was a structure of symbols which had no specific meaning. Paula’s comfortably secure universe fell apart.

Mr. Byron is one of the few Earthmen privileged to be able to speak, and write, languages of other planets. He is fluent in Venusian, Plutonian and Krügerian—the latter being the tongue employed by the people who live on a planet moving round the far-away red dwarf star Krüger 60. In our previous forays we have always found extra-terrestrials who can communicate with us. True, Allingham’s Martian did not speak English, but semaphore provided a good substitute; George Adamski’s original visitors were coy, but when they got to know him better they showed themselves to be completely fluent.

[T]here always seems to come a day when I must descend to reality and actually put some of those words on paper. And, in so doing, must recognize yet again that I was born with a faulty connection between mind and hand, something which suggests that I have been thinking those marvellous tales in Venusian, a language notoriously untranslatable into English. Willy-nilly, I must press forward with that translation, because—to descend into the grossly mundane—I put words on paper only under financial duress.

‘Try this, Nellie,’ Jonah would suggest, handing his wife a recipe he had found in a magazine or on a hotel menu. She would take it as if it had come from Typhoid Mary. Holding it between her index finger and her thumb, she’d look at the recipe as if it were written in Venusian, and she didn’t read the language. Wrinkling up her pretty nose in distaste, Nellie would finally ditch the recipe and prepare the dish using her own instincts.

The little Venusian croaked in agreement. ‘It is a marker. This is where Va’hak’ri land begins. Good place for dul’kat.’ Elizabeth nodded and placed a hand on the marker for a moment. She then knelt upon the sand of the beach and began to speak loudly in Venusian, a language well known for its clicks and guttural sounds, ones that do not come easily to mankind’s physical makeup. And yet she continued on for several minutes, with Gar’uk nodding at several points.