How fast do they change colour? How large is their visible spectrum? If the answers are respectively, "quite slow" and "small", you might end up with a situation like Old Entish: it is only worth saying anything if it's worth taking a long time to say.
edited 23rd Mar '11 3:28:31 PM by Yej
Yeah, I think flashing would work better if a larger vocabulary is needed. Unless they differentiate really hard between light blue and slightly lighter light blue and pass stuff like this color vision test easily: http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77
@_@ There's probably room for catastrophic mistranslation by others...
Well, some squids flash colors quickly to communicate to each other.
Actually, if they're Eldritch Abominations, how many eyes do they have? Being a monster with tons of eyes, colorizing each one differently could make a great many possibilities, I would think.
Going by the eyes alone seems a bit limited (unless your Abominations have a ''lot'' of eyes
, then it might work), wouldn't a large area of skin work better?
edited 23rd Mar '11 11:15:31 PM by MattII
They have two eyes, which both flash in sync. I was thinking more 'one colour' = one syllable. Lots of languages have 'yes' and 'no' as monosyllabic words, which is why no is just one colour. Other words might be a sequence of two to four colours.
edited 24th Mar '11 7:28:41 AM by Ettina
If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.Unless they can glow as well. They're Eldritch Abominations. Why not give them a few more eyes?
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."![]()
Depends on how quickly they change color and how many colors they can differentiate. If they can tell the difference between 500 nm light and 501 nm light, then they've got about 350 "syllables" to play with just in the visible spectrum.
That said, I'm not sure why you'd make their eyes change color. It makes sense to have a color-changing-communication-thingie, but I don't see any reason why it would be their eyes that did it.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Nor conventional logic really. Their vocabulary could be incredibly complex, their eyes could flash colour or hues never before seen by man and they could very well have an asymmetrical assembly of eyes. Maybe their eyes dilate and expand in order to donate special meanings to their words? Kinda like differentiating between "there" and "they're"?
Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

I ended up giving my EldritchAbominations a language based on magically changing your eye color. Any ideas how this would work? (All I've decided so far is that 'no' is a purplish color. The protagonists, who are half Eldritch Abomination, can understand this language but have very limited ability to speak it.)
If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.