A Fresh Start

Daisy asked:

If you could insert a “knowledge card” into your brain, what one subject would you like to be expert on?

I’d really like a card giving me fluency in all the world’s languages. Every single one of them (except for l33t - that’s just stupid!).

The world would be the crustacean of my choice, wouldn’t it?

Ooh, ooh, ooh! Because I’m a greedy soul, I’m defining “language” as “a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols“.

Move over, Rex Harrison. It’s time to sing together:

If we could talk to the animals, just imagine it
Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee
Imagine talking to a tiger, chatting to a cheetah
What a neat achievement that would be.

If we could talk to the animals, learn their languages
Maybe take an animal degree.
We’d study elephant and eagle, buffalo and beagle,
Alligator, guinea pig, and flea.

We would converse in polar bear and python,
And we could curse in fluent kangaroo.
If people asked us, can you speak in rhinoceros,
We’d say, “Of courserous, can’t you?”

If we could talk to the animals, learn their languages
Think of all the things we could discuss
If we could walk with the animals, talk with the animals,
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals,
And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us.

[Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse]

Em3 is away. In his absence this has been a prepared post for your (hopeful) entertainment.