"Phonemes?" Mao Zhengzhi frowned slightly and muttered to himself.

Seeing the puzzled look on Mao Zhengzhi's face, Meng Lu quickly explained.

"A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech divided according to the natural properties of speech."

"Just like vowels and consonants, for example, the Chinese language we currently use has 32 phonemes in total."

"All our usual communications are completed 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, I should be able to make a simple analysis of their language system.

"

Lu Yongchang and Mao Zhengzhi nodded repeatedly.

As expected of a professional.

Lu Yongchang once again turned his attention to the holographic image aside and carefully observed all the processed voice clips.

"Huh?"

His eyes moved slightly, as if he had discovered something.

Under the watchful eyes of Meng Lu and Mao Zhengzhi, Lu Yongchang took a step forward and stretched out his hand to mark an area in the holographic projection.

"Professor?" Meng Lu looked at Lu Yongchang's movements with some surprise, and was a little confused for a moment.

Lu Yongchang did not speak, but was minding his own business in processing the demarcated voice clip.

With the help of Zero, Lu Yongchang easily removed various frequency fluctuations containing information.

Then, a spectrum chart that was relatively stable but still fluctuated slightly randomly appeared in front of everyone.

"This is..." Mao Zhengzhi suddenly realized. As a biologist, he had already noticed the significance of Lu Yongchang's actions. "No wonder we couldn't find any similarities at that time!"

"So this is where the problem lies!"

But Meng Lu on the side still looked confused.

As her main research direction is language, she doesn't understand Lu Yongchang's purpose of doing this.

"This is the ultrasonic frequency used by giant fish to explore their surroundings. You can simply understand it as the noise floor in their speech."

Lu Yongchang didn't look back and explained directly.

"Living in the deep sea, they can only rely on ultrasonic waves to sense the surrounding environment, but this also presents a problem."

"How should they communicate when sensing their environment?"

"You can't risk being blind to communicate with your companions, right?"

"So, they evolved this unique language system."

Meng Lu suddenly realized it and took over Lu Yongchang's words: "On top of the basic ultrasonic waves that play a sensing role, superimpose ultrasonic waves of other frequencies to transmit information through frequency fluctuations!"

"Unfortunately, humans cannot hear these ultrasound waves."

"Otherwise, they might form a beautiful piece of music when they communicate."

Lu Yongchang nodded noncommittally.

As Meng Lu said, this possibility does exist.

If these ultrasonic waves are replaced by audio that can be heard by human ears, then when these giant fish are talking, you will hear bursts of pure music without any lyrics, rising and falling.

Of course, whether the music sounds good or not depends on personal luck.

Some words sound like celestial music, while others sound like the harsh noise of scratching glass.

But no matter what, as long as you say enough words, they can eventually perform a beautiful song.

Just like letting many monkeys hit the typewriter keys at will, they may eventually write an epic masterpiece.

Lu Yongchang retracted his somewhat divergent thoughts and turned his attention to the holographic image again.

I don't know why, but when he observes the "sentences" composed of phonemes, he always feels a little strange.

He frowned slightly and stared at the holographic projection.

After pondering for a moment, he spoke again: "There seems to be something wrong with the phoneme arrangement of these giant fish..."

Meng Lu perked up and nodded immediately: "Professor, have you also discovered this phenomenon?"

"There seems to be no so-called grammar in their language system."

As she spoke, she opened another holographic image with a puzzled look on her face: "Professor, look, this is the sound the giant fish leader made when urging his companions."

"According to statistics, a total of 43 voice clips were generated during this period, and the duration of each voice clip was approximately 2.1-2.3 seconds."

"It stands to reason that these voice clips should be telling the same thing."

Lu Yongchang nodded slightly.

As it should be.

"The problem arises." Meng Lu reached out and slid her hand on the holographic projection again, "These 43 voice fragments have the same phonemes."

"These phonemes form some short or long syllables, and like phonemes, these syllables also exist in 43 speech segments at the same time."

"but!"

"The order of these syllables is not consistent. They seem to be arranged randomly." Meng Lu shrugged and said helplessly, "At least Zero didn't find any pattern."

"This strange phenomenon occurs in many speech clips."

"So I suspect there is no grammar at all in their language."

Lu Yongchang suddenly frowned: "Then how do they understand what their companions said?"

"There is no fixed grammar, which will inevitably cause unnecessary misunderstandings."

"This is undoubtedly fatal for a species."

Meng Lu hesitated for a moment, then slowly said: "This may have something to do with the way they talk."

"Through data processing, I found that many of these more than 100,000 voice clips are repeated clips."

"When they talk, they may repeat themselves."

"Different syllables are arranged and combined with each other until the other party understands them completely."

"...Reader?" Lu Yongchang twitched the corner of his mouth and complained subconsciously.

Meng Lu looked at Lu Yongchang blankly. This sentence broke her inherent impression of Lu Yongchang.

She nodded with difficulty: "To a certain extent, it is indeed a bit like a repeater."

Although it sounds strange, in Lu Yongchang's view, this is not an incomprehensible phenomenon.

After all, studies have shown that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading. For example, when you finish reading this sentence, you find that all the characters are messed up.

Maybe the brains of these giant fish have similar functions?

However, this is not good news for humans.

Although it is unclear how these giant fish understand this irregular language, it undoubtedly adds a lot of difficulties to the Academy of Sciences' subsequent deciphering work.

"Let's summarize it first."

Lu Yongchang pondered for a moment and said slowly: "At least, find all the same syllables first, and then analyze the meaning based on the video."

Meng Lu nodded helplessly.

"I'm afraid that's all it can do."

Although there is zero help, the workload of this "stupid method" is still extremely huge.
Chapter completed!