Two kingdoms had been at war for thirty years, but the time

program hello; begin writeln('Hello, world!'); end. — Pascal

came when the crown prince of one kingdom fell in love with the vizier’s daughter of the other kingdom.

Now these two had roughly the worldly sophistication of your average pair of iguanas, and they said, “Lo, we will teach our two kingdoms to speak the same language, and then they will understand each other and will be at peace.” So they cast about for a suitable, neutral language and eventually decided upon Ethiopian, because most of its vowels were schwa, and they reasoned, not wholly lacking in prudence, that “Anyone who can’t pronounce schwa can’t pronounce anything.”

"!dlrow olleH">v : , ^_@ — Befunge

But while attending to schwa the crown prince and the vizier’s daughter overlooked the inhibiting effect upon the average citizen of deponent verbs and object participles. In fact, when the people of the two kingdoms discovered that their new language had deponent verbs and object participles, they seized the unfortunate youths and shoved them off the edge of a cliff.

Then they resumed their fighting.

Analysis: If the two kingdoms had learned the same language and understood each other, they probably would have fought even harder than they did.

	Language Acquisition Device Found—R. Davis
	Speech Disorders as Indicators of Potential for Lyrical Success—Ozzie Tchomzkij
	SpecGram Vol CLI, No 2 Contents