[ID: Sketchy art of a battered-looking Bones, Spock, and Jim walking. Bones and Spock look exhausted and are trudging along, while Jim is grinning hugely and marching on. End ID] ID thanks to @princess-of-purple-prose<3
I see your “humans are incapable of pronouncing my very alien name” and raise you- humans are actually incredible vocal mimics with uncanny knack for xenolanguage.
In Star Trek and a lot of other franchises that deal with aliens, the aliens are pretty much homogeneous. Same language, culture, whatever. A lot of the time they look like clones of each other.
But humans maintain their diversity. I think it’s more likely that two alien species would have trouble talking to each other, but a human would be able to pick up on both languages relatively easily.
I also think that, since languages also use different rules and sounds, people who know certain human languages do better with certain alien languages.
I saw a headcannon here that people who speak Hebrew would be able to pronounce Vulcan names- but imagine how funny it would be if Vulcan was an easier leap from Hebrew than English is.
