I wrote this short story in the fall of 2006, for a class I took called “Linguistics of Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond.” If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, I actually had to learn Klingon. Or, at least enough to finish the Klingon-English and English-Klingon translation exercises we were assigned for homework.

Although since the class was, fundamentally, about linguistics, one assignment required us to write about an incident where language causes a humorous or humiliating misunderstanding. My short story involves both.

An Alien Courtship

A year ago today, on August 8th, 2048, an alien species landed on Earth.  Their spaceshoe crashed down in the small Chinese city of Xi’an, barely missing the excavation site of the famous army of  terracotta warriors.  China was only mildly annoyed at the near-loss of their two-thousand year old historical relics; they recovered quickly to realize that they would be the first country in the world to have contact with an honest-to-science alien species.

In the beginning, China called these aliens Xingren, meaning ’star people’ in Chinese.  The entire human population of Earth waited breathlessly until Chinese linguists were able to learn of the alien language to have rudimentary communication with them.  Soon, we learned that the species called themselves Qiguai.

Though the details were predictably classified as top secret by the Chinese government, it unfortunately became clear that the Qiguai could not survive on Earth indefinitely.  To continue our contact with the Qiguai, we had to find a place for them to live.  In a great act of generosity, the World Governing Organization sectioned of a small area on the planet Mars as a habitat for the stranded Qiguai to live.  This alien reservation was called Xing, in honor of the first name that was given to the Qiguai.

It was my first intergalactic flight.  As a moderately famous linguist, I was one of the people selected for a highly specialized and diverse group of humans to observe, document, and learn from the Qiguais.  In the time leading up to my departure, I voraciously studied what little knowledge we had of Yuyan, the Qiguai language.  On the day that I boarded the spaceshoe flight to Xing, I was armed with a relatively small vocabulary, but its size continued to increase quickly and exponentially.

Yuyan is a tonal language, a fact that lent the Chinese people, and myself, a large advantage during this first contact.  However,  as the powerful spaceshoe engines powered up, I realized that I was not well-versed in interpreting the tones that my stomach was making as a last-ditch effort to talk some sense into the higher powers.  It didn’t take a genius to understand why my hands trembled as I fastened my shoelaces.  I was going to have an interesting adventure, indeed.

For those of you who are reading a translated version of this account, ‘interesting’ just so happens to be the most non-committal word in the English language.

* * *

The Qiguai were strangely similar to humans.  I found that I settled in far faster than I ever could have imagined.  Within a matter of weeks I could function fairly well in most basic social situations in this budding, bustling settlement.  Still, surprisingly enough, the tones in Yuyan language were more challenging than those that I was familiar with in Chinese, which often led to embarrassing moments with the Qiguai.  Most of these mishaps were fairly trivial and harmless, until one blustery morning on the red planet.

“Qing wen,” I interrupted a tall Qiguai male as I fumbled in my purse to retrieve my map.  When I straightened back up, I was surprised to see how handsome he was.  As I was idly pondering the fact that I had not previously been attracted to any of the Qiguai, he leaned down and kissed me.

I jumped back in confusion.  “Aiya! Dui bu qi, dui bu qi!!” I apologized breathlessly, shaking my head in an attempt to make sense of this odd situation.  The attractive Qiguai male looked puzzled and ever-so-slightly amused, or so I thought.  He could have been looking angry and possibly homicidal, for all I really knew.  In addition to the challenges that I was facing with learning an alien language, I never anticipated the trouble I would with interpreting alien facial expressions.

“Uh, ni wei shenme wen wo ne?” As I made my inquiry, I stumbled over the word for ‘kiss.’  Suddenly, the situation dawned on me.  Though I had been trying to politely ask him to pause and give me directions, I had used the incorrect tones and had mistakenly asked him to kiss me.  At least he obliged, I thought as I slapped my forehead and shook my head again.  With some luck, my actions were portraying bewilderment and not informing him of some underlying intent to kill.  I hoped that it was at least adorable sort of bewilderment.  Shit.

“Ah, wo zhidao.  Mei wenti ba!” He simultaneously realized my error, and his, too, though he showed no outward sign of regret.  Not that I would have picked up on it anyway.

“Ni xuyao bangzhu ma?“  He grinned in what I thought was a winning way and offered his assistance.  I returned his smile and opened up the map that had been hanging, forgotten, in my hands.  In my continual and varied attempts to increase my vocabulary, I was trying to find the specialty food market to educate myself about Qiguai cuisine.

“Ni… renshi… umm, zhe’ge shichang ma?” My face flushed red as I stuttered through my words again.  Thankfully, his face lit up in recognition (or possibly, in utter disgust) and he offered to lead the way.  With a quickness that surely betrayed my innermost feelings, I happily obliged.

* * *

That wayward kiss was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between two entirely different types of carbon beings.  I inwardly smiled every time I remembered what my college best friend used to say about learning a new language: “You just need to find a cute native speaker and make him your boyfriend,” she always insisted.  That was the way she successfully learned French, Spanish, and Italian, the last of which ultimately landed her a husband.  Though I would have never admitted it to another, I had an ever-growing crush on Nanrong and began to wonder about the radical and almost inconceivable prospect of marrying him.  Although the population of Earth had finally come to terms with gay marriage, it greatly amused me to wonder what they might think of inter-special unions.

At this thought, a sly smile crossed my face, and Nanrong immediately inquired about what I found so entertaining.  He demonstrated an amazing capability for studying the facial expressions and interpreting the body language of humans; in fact, the skill he had acquired rapidly eclipsed my slowly evolving ability to pick up on the context clues of his culture.

“Uh… meiyou.” I hesitated as I considered explaining it to him, but we had never even discussed the possibility of a relationship beyond our friendship.  It seemed awfully forward to discuss marriage at this point.

Instead, I shrugged in a semblance of apology, and his response was to shrug quickly three times in a row, pause, and then shrug twice again.  These actions could possibly cause another human to question his sanity; the wide, lopsided smirk that belied his intelligence did not help.  Yet this was one of our many inside jokes.  Shrugging was an art he had not mastered so quickly, but he was keen on the fact that I found it so humorous.  Though he could correctly execute this body movement in the company of other humans, between us, his initial over-enthusiasm had become the norm.

I turned my attention back to the American history textbook that Nanrong and I were poring over.  The lifespan of Qiguai was easily three times as long as a normal human being, so human history was always a subject that fascinated him.  Our great accomplishments seemed even greater to him, for they were achieved in what he perceived to be such a short lifetime.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, came The Question.  “Ni riqi ren ma?“  Did he really just ask me, in plain and simple terms, whether or not I date?  I flushed a deep shade of crimson, something that would have normally enchanted Nanrong, but this particular time, he just looked somewhat befuddled by my reaction.  At this point in my time on Xing, I was no longer entirely unsure of the emotions reflected on his face.  There was obvious confusion in his violet-colored eyes, which in turn, completely confounded me.

“Duuuiii… wo riqi ren…” I responded slowly, taking a chance and shyly offered the affirmative.  Sure, I had been on Xing for awhile now, I rationalized, but I had been known to date people in the past.  ”Ni ne??” My eyes flashed indignantly as I returned the ball to his court, yet my heart skipped a beat in anticipation of his response.

“Dang ran.“  Of course, he answered with an obvious air of confidence that further muddled my understanding of the situation.  Well, of course of course, I silently huffed.  What was I thinking?  How could a stunningly gorgeous alien life form not call on similarly attractive alien females?  I had seen plenty of them on Xing, their tall, lithe, impossibly thin and chiseled bodies gliding effortlessly in the atmosphere.  Well, hell, I was not someone to scoff at.  I was reasonably attractive by human standards for sure, but Nanrong had previously confirmed my allure to aliens.

I opened and closed my mouth several times, but the sound of my breath was the only sound that escaped my jaws.  I was at loss on how to continue with this uncomfortable, yet significant conversation.  Fortunately, though he was slightly disconcerted, he looked as if he felt significantly less awkward about the topic than I did.  “Na’ge zhidu, ni juede ne?” He politely asked me what my thoughts were on the process.

“Bu tai jiandan.“  Despite his apparant ease, I stubbornly asserted that this particular matter was really not all that easy to discuss.

“Wei shenme bu??” He raised his eyebrows as he asked me why not, and his eyes turned a deeper shade of purple as he struggled to identify the emotions in my answer.

That was it.  I just couldn’t dance around the obvious anymore.  I went off in a long discourse about why matters of the human heart were just not as straight-forward and clean-cut as he obviously thought they were.  Afterwards, I asked him if he understood where I was coming from.  Nanrong responded that he didn’t quite grasp what I was saying, but he lamented that these so-called “matters of the heart” seemed much simpler in his culture.  When I asked him why not, he shrugged.  Only once, and with such human perplexity that I momentarily forgot that I was in the company of an alien from outer space.  I knew now, that he was not playing games.  My heart ached as I prepared myself to ask the question that had been hanging in the air, thus far still left unsaid.

“Ni yao riqi wo ma?“  There.  I had done it.  I had mustered the courage to inquire if he wanted to date me.  I closed my eyes and tried to stay my nerves as I waited impatiently for his response.

“Dang ran.” Of course, he said.  When he said it this time, his voice was soft and he pronounced the words with delicate care.  My eyes were still closed when he spoke, but they fluttered opened when I felt the warmth of his hand on the left side of my chest, above my heart and near my collar-bone.

I quivered at his gentle touch.  “Zai zher?  Xian zai??“  I couldn’t believe it.  Right here? Right now?  Nanrong wanted to date me?  A tiny amount of uncertainty that remained in his eyes, as he nodded his consent.

“Okay.” I said, using the utterly universal phrase of compliance. “Okay!” I repeated the word with a sudden, over-whelming sense of enthusiasm and anticipation.  Perhaps we would go down in history as the first ever inter-special couple.  I could get used to that idea.

He nodded briskly, acknowledging my return to good spirits, and offered me a number.  “Wo juede er’shi sui.  Chabuduo.“   He estimated I was in my twenties, give or take a few.

Though I stood rooted to the ground, my body began to waver in a dizzy, worrisome way.  I was dumbfounded.  Furthermore, I was humiliated.

In an attempt to save face, I sputtered out a confirmation.  Because Nanrong was, of course, entirely correct.

In my giddy infatuation, I had entirely forgotten that the Qiguai were equipped with a special sensory system that let the immediately and accurately identify the age of a being by merely touching an area close to their heart.  The practice of carbon dating, as we humans call it.

I smiled in private amusement at my folly.  Nanrong looked greatly relieved that his guess had been successful and that I had returned to a seemingly normal state of emotions.  A few minutes later, during a lull in the conversation, I locked eyes with him.  Great affection filled the depth of my stare, but I doubted that he picked up on this nuance.  Someday, I knew he would.  Someday, I knew I would have the opportunity share this story with him and I knew we would laugh about it together.

Until then… The End.