"Phonetics?" Mao Zhengzhi frowned slightly and muttered to himself.
Seeing the puzzled look on Mao Zhengzhi's face, Meng Lu quickly offered an explanation.
"A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech that is defined based on the natural properties of speech."
"Just like vowels and consonants, for example, the Chinese we currently use has a total of 32 phonemes."
"All our daily communication is based on these 32 phonemes."
"As for the communication between these giant fish, I have discovered 52 phonemes so far. Although there may be other phonemes that have not yet been discovered, with these 52 phonemes, we should be able to do a simple analysis of their language system."
Lü Yongchang and Mao Zhengzhi nodded repeatedly.
As expected of a professional.
Lu Yongchang turned his gaze to the holographic image beside him again, carefully observing all the processed audio clips.
"Huh?"
His eyes flickered slightly, as if he had noticed something.
Under the watchful eyes of Meng Lu and Mao Zhengzhi, Lü Yongchang stepped forward and delineated an area in the holographic projection.
"Professor?" Meng Lu looked at Lü Yongchang's actions with some surprise, and was puzzled for a moment.
Lü Yongchang didn't speak, but instead processed the designated audio segment on his own.
With the help of Zero, Lü Yongchang easily eliminated various frequency fluctuations containing information.
Subsequently, a relatively stable spectrum, but still with slight random fluctuations, appeared before everyone.
"This is..." Mao Zhengzhi suddenly realized, as a biologist he had already understood the significance of Lü Yongchang's actions, "No wonder we couldn't find any similarities back then!"
"So that's where the problem was!"
But Meng Lu, standing to the side, still looked completely bewildered.
Her main research area was language, so she did not understand Lü Yongchang's purpose in doing so.
"This is the ultrasonic frequency that giant fish use to explore their surroundings; you can simply understand it as the background noise in their speech."
Without turning around, Lü Yongchang began to explain.
"Living in the deep sea, they can only rely on ultrasound to sense their surroundings, but this presents a problem."
How should they communicate when sensing their environment?
"We can't risk going blind just to communicate with our companions, can we?"
"Thus, they evolved this unique language system."
Meng Lu suddenly realized and continued Lü Yongchang's words: "On the basic ultrasound that plays a sensing role, other frequencies of ultrasound are superimposed, and information is transmitted through frequency fluctuations!"
"Unfortunately, humans cannot hear these ultrasonic waves."
"Otherwise, their communication might create a beautiful melody of rising and falling."
Lü Yongchang nodded noncommittally.
As Meng Lu said, this possibility certainly exists.
If you were to replace these ultrasonic waves with audio frequencies that are audible to the human ear, you would hear pure music, sometimes high, sometimes low, without any lyrics, as these giant fish talk.
Of course, whether this music is good or not depends on personal luck.
Some words sound like heavenly music, while others sound like the harsh noise of scraping glass.
But no matter what, as long as enough words are spoken, they can eventually create a beautiful melody.
Just as letting many monkeys randomly tap on a typewriter might eventually produce an epic masterpiece.
Lu Yongchang pulled himself out of his daze and turned his gaze back to the holographic image.
For some reason, he always felt something was off when observing those "sentences" composed of phonemes.
He frowned slightly as he stared at the holographic projection.
After a moment's thought, he spoke again, "The phoneme arrangement of these giant fish seems to have some problems..."
Meng Lu perked up and nodded repeatedly: "Professor, have you noticed this phenomenon as well?"
"Their language system seems to have no grammar."
As she spoke, she opened another holographic image with a puzzled look on her face: "Professor, look, this is the sound that the giant fish leader made when urging his companions."
"According to statistics, a total of 43 audio segments were generated during this period, each lasting approximately 2.1-2.3 seconds."
"Logically speaking, these audio clips should all be telling the same story."
Lü Yongchang nodded slightly.
That's how it should be.
“A problem has arisen.” Meng Lu reached out and slid her hand across the holographic projection again. “These 43 voice clips share the same phonemes.”
"These phonemes form syllables that are either short or long, and like phonemes, these syllables also exist in 43 speech segments."
"but!"
“The order of these syllables is not consistent; they seem to be randomly arranged,” Meng Lu shrugged, somewhat helplessly. “At least, Zero didn’t find any pattern.”
"This strange phenomenon occurs in many audio clips."
"Therefore, I suspect that their languages do not have grammar at all."
Lu Yongchang frowned immediately: "Then how do they understand what their companions are saying?"
"The lack of a fixed grammar will inevitably lead to unnecessary misunderstandings."
"This would be fatal for a species."
Meng Lu hesitated for a moment before slowly saying, "This may have something to do with the way they speak."
"Through data processing, I discovered that many of these 100,000+ audio clips were repeated segments."
"When they talk, they may keep repeating their own words."
"Different syllables are arranged and combined until the other party fully understands them."
“…A broken record?” Lu Yongchang’s lips twitched, and he subconsciously made a sarcastic remark.
Meng Lu stared blankly at Lü Yongchang; these words shattered her preconceived notions about him.
She nodded with difficulty: "In some ways, it is indeed a bit like a broken record."
Although it may sound unbelievable, in Lü Yongchang's view, it is not a difficult phenomenon to understand.
After all, research has shown that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading comprehension. For example, you might find that all the characters in this sentence are jumbled up after you finish reading it.
Perhaps these giant fish have similar brain functions?
However, this is not good news for humanity.
Although it is unclear how these giant fish understood this non-standard language, it undoubtedly added considerable difficulty to the Academy's subsequent deciphering efforts.
"Let's summarize and organize it first."
Lu Yongchang pondered for a moment and then slowly said, "At the very least, we should find all the syllables that sound the same, and then analyze their meaning based on the video recording."
Meng Lu nodded somewhat helplessly.
"I'm afraid this is the only way."
Even with zero help, the workload of this "clumsy method" is still extremely large.
At least for the next week, Meng Lu will probably have to work overtime in the lab.
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