Perhaps my point was unclear. I am not denying them the ability of
speech. Rather, I am suggesting that, if they do not share some
common referents with us, it would be extremely difficult to decipher
their hypothesized speech; and the common referents are far from
obvious.
Any technological species we find anywhere in the universe, we can
easily find some common referents with, probably rather substantial
ones. The classic example being the periodic table of the elements.
Another culture might rotate it or reflect it, but its basic
structure and the meaning of its contents is entirely dictated by
nature and will be the same (aside from errors, incompleteness, and
local variations in the relative frequency of isotopes) throughout
this universe.
With cetacea, it is not so easy.
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