When I made first contact with the alien I was amazed

[tribdog]

When I made first contact with the alien I was amazed by how different it looked, even though it's basic shape resembled mine. For example, we both had 2 arms and 2 hands, but the alien's hands tapered into only two digits on one hand and three on the other. I tried speaking to the alien, I said "Hello" and it seemed to understand, but when it replied I only heard noise. Its language wasn't something any human with only one tongue could ever speak. I had no clue what it meant when it replied, "Mjvvc'". We just sat and looked at each other for quite a while. It seemed interested in my extra fingers and kept grabbing them. I pulled my hands away and told it, "yes, 10 fingers most humans have 10 fingers." That made the alien mad. It looked at me like I was the biggest liar in the Universe. I told it "Now I understand." and when it said:
" Accj a''c'da d'mj cdawj D'ccnbdc'l d'mad' cdcccjdcjd daca d'mj vacdd' bccanx d'jacdjcc?"
I was able to reply. What was my answer, yes or no?

 

[davilla]

Are we to assume that you answered correctly? I would have to say it entirely depends on the transliteration... unless this one of those silly games where the alien's language has the same grammar as some modern-day language, not counting common mistakes like the substitution of "it's" for "its" in English.

 

[tribdog]

Are we to assume that you answered correctly? I would have to say it entirely depends on the transliteration... unless this one of those silly games where the alien's language has the same grammar as some modern-day language, not counting common mistakes like the substitution of "it's" for "its" in English.

no this is one of those silly games where we come and make smartass comments like "are we to assume that you answered correctly"

 

[p_branes]

The answer would be yes...

 

[tribdog]

and did you flip a coin for that one?

 

[Monique]

vcv, I tried it also tribdog :)
didn't figure it out yet though :(

 

[DarkAnt]

well I am going to say no just because no one else said no

 

[tribdog]

I'm afraid I'll have to give the answer because I just got into a major fight with my girlfriend and have to leave the country. Okay, not the country, but the apartment. If I don't leave one of us is going to get their head shoved into the toilet and I'm afraid it would be me.
I realized that the alien was trying to speak to me in English, but it didn't really understand the lettering. When it acted like I was lying about having 10 fingers I realized it must use a different numbering system. based on the number of fingers the alien had I realized that while I used 0-9 it must use 0-4. I thought about it a while and also realized that the alien must normally use a numerical language on it's own planet, so when it came to Earth and got a list of the alphabet it thought it was doing the right thing by converting the numbers it would normally use back into letters for my benefit. the only problem was that when it looked at a list of the alphabet it didn't realize that the numbering system was different. For example it thought that 10 would represent an e, but on the list next to the number 10 was j. On some other letters (from o to z which it thought of as 30-101) there was no corresponding number so it did the next best thing and used the single digits as separate letters, so a 42(v) would be d and b. it found letters 10(e/j) and 20(j/t) but any other place it saw a 0 it placed a '. so the correct answer would be yes.

 

[Monique]

You are too smart for us tribdog.. I'll have to figure out what that alien said later today when I'm more awake

wh0h00! I did it! I see you are even infamous in other galaxies?

 

[davilla]

I knew there must have been some connection between letters and numbers because the set of letters used was rather small. But it didn't occur to me that base 10 might at all be involved in the alien's logic. Oh well.

Sorry about your gf.