alien franchise - Who discovered the Engineer's language (and how it sounded)?

On the trip to the Engineer's world, David was learning to speak their language. But where did the lessons come from? On the star maps that were left, they showed a few symbols, but

there don't seem to be enough for an entire language, and

how would they know the pronunciation of the symbols?

Answer

David wasn't learning to speak the Engineer's language, he was learning ancient languages in order to be able to decode the Engineer's language. This is based on the theory that human languages are derived from the Engineer's language.

In the scene David is learning the building blocks of language and we see him taking a lesson in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Linguistics, where a holographic professor, takes him through the ABC’s and recites Schleicher’s Fable. An artificial text composed in the reconstructed PIE, in 1868, to demonstrate the language’s use.
- The linguistics of Prometheus – What David says to the Engineer

Comments

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