In the following essay, Anassa Rhenisch discusses why alien
languages will have almost nothing in common with human
tongues...and why alien forms of communication could eschew
language altogether.  Contrary to Hollywood and the majority of
fictional languages, alien languages are almost certainly not
going to look like human ones. They're not going to have the
same sounds, the same word orders, or the same way of solving
problems like time, direction, and ownership. Why? Because human
DNA and culture help determine what human languages look like,
and aliens will, by definition, not share that background.
That's not to say there won't be similarities, though. Because
language is a communication system and therefore has to convey
information efficiently, there are some facts that won't change.
On Neurobiology  The ability to use language will be coded in
the aliens' genes. Either the aliens evolved language and have
basic linguistic structures in their brains at birth, or every
individual has to independently