“Arrival,” And The 9 Million Names For Death

How do you say death in heptapod?

In the new science fiction film Arrival,  directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, an alien species—creatures referred to as heptapods—visits earth in gigantic black egg-like spaceships.

What do the aliens want? What is their culture like? And where are they from? Before answering these questions the people Earth first must be able to communicate with the aliens, which means they need to learn their language. This task composes much of the film. Arrival is different than pretty much any other recent science fiction film, McGill University linguist Jessica Coon, who was consulted on the film, told Business Insider, because “an academic is the protagonist, and not just an academic, an academic linguist.” To watch Arrival is to think about words through the mind of a linguist. And in thinking about language I began thinking about one specific word we use a lot here at Digital Dying, death, and how it translates into other languages. Below is a list, it reads like a somber mantra, or perhaps a poem…

In Italian death is morte.
In Maltese death is mewt.
In Portuguese death is morte.
In Romanian death is moarte.
In Spanish death is muerte.
In Lithuanian death is mirtis.
In Latvian death is nave.
In Latin death is mortem.
In Esperanto death is morto.
In Galician death is morte.
In Catalan death is mort.

Maybe a linguist could explain it to me, but heading east in Europe an s is added to death, some of the vowels drop out, and the word takes on a slightly different tone…

In Czech death is smrt.
In Slovenian death is smrt.
In Bosnian death is smrt.
In Croatian death is smrt.
In Slovak death is smrt’.
In Estonian death is surm.
In Polish death is śmierć.

Heading north in Europe, the structure of the word death changes completely…

In Danish death is dod.
In German death is tod.
In Dutch death is dood.
In Norwegian death is dǿd.    
In Swedish death is död.
In Icelandic death is dauda.

And then there are the European countries and cultures where death is a word unique unto its own…

In Welsh death is marwolaeth.
In Irish death is bás.
In Finish death is kuolema.
In Turkish death is ölüm
In Albanian death is vdekje.
In Basque death is heriotza.

Moving on to Africa…

In Chichewa, mainly spoken in Malawi and Zambia, death is imfa.
In Hausa, a central African language spoken by nearly 50 million people, death is mutuwa.
In Igbo, a language largely spoken in Nigeria, death is onwu.
In Sesotho, spoken primarily in South Africa, death is lefu.
In Somali, which along with Arabic is one of the official languages of Somalia, death is kifo.
In Yoruba, spoken in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, death is iku.
In Zulu, one of the official languages of South Africa, death is ukufa.     

And moving out to sea, among Austroneasian languages, comprising many of the island nations of the far western Pacific…

In Cebuano death is kamatayon.
In Filipino death is kamatayan.
In Indonesian death is kematian.
In Javanese death is pati.
In Malagasy death is ny fahafatesana.
In Malay death is kematian.
In Maori death is mate.

Of course, the list could be so much longer, as I am leaving out the languages whose alphabets are different, making it impossible to convey those particular versions of death in English. But we can talk about some of these death gods and goddesses…

Like Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death.
Or Zhang Heng, the Chinese ghost king.
Or Jeoseung Sacha, the Korean messenger of death.
Or Anubis, the Egyptian guardian of the dead.
Or Erebus, the primeval god of darkness in Greek mythology, his mists encircled the underworld and filled the hollows of the earth.
Or Hel, goddess of the dead in Norse mythology.
Or Nenia Dea, the goddess of funerals in Roman mythology.
Or Februus, god of purification, riches, and death in Etruscan mythology.
Or Aipaloovik, an evil sea god associated with death and destruction in Inuit mythology.

Which brings us back to North America, and English, where death is death.

And what happens when a heptapod goes through the process of death? Well, let’s just say, I don’t want to give any spoilers away. But if you want to think in a complex way about aliens and language, then go see Arrival.