What language do you speak?

“Why does it smell like stale beer out there?” I ask. He looks at me blankly, as well he might, since neither of us drink beer in America since there isn’t any, only lager.
“I’m sure I have no idea?” Which confirms that neither of us have a clue. “Stale beer?” he quizzes.
“Well, sort of yeasty.”
“Bread perhaps? Stale bread?”
“Stale bread doesn’t smell anything like stale beer. Stale bread is more musty less acrid, more suffocating.”
“More suffocating? I think I’d rather be suffocated with beer than with bread.”
“You’d drown in beer, that’s not the same thing at all.”
“Well in both cases you can’t breathe. The net effect is the same.”
“Net effect indeed! The same? Hardly. Everybody knows that it’s far more pleasant to drown than to be suffocated to death.”
“Everybody does, do they? How does ‘everybody’ know that exactly? Did they take a poll at the morgue?”
“Um, well, it’s common knowledge of course, based upon lots of….scientific studies that empirically prove …after the fact…. that nine out of every ten suicides is by drowning, whereas only one person in every ten enjoyed death by suffocation.”
“After the fact! Suicides! Enjoy? My eye! When did you last try suicide by suffocation? Bit tricky that one I think. Maybe we’re getting mixed up with murder instead of suicide?”
“Well the stench is enough to suck the breath out of anyone.”
“Death via vacuum. Death by dough. Doesn’t sound very catchy to me. Anyway, this is a pointless conversation, there’s no logic to it. If you’re stuck in sealed box with beer you’re not going to die of the fumes, nor if it were a loaf of bread. There no such thing as death by fumes.”
“There is.”
“No.”
“Gas. People are gassed all the time. It used to be a very common method of suicide. Death by fumes, there you go.”
“Ovens aren’t fueled by beer or bread.”
“It’s the principal.”
“What principal?”
“The penicillin principle!”
“Don’t give me that. The sum total of your knowledge on the subject of medicine could be written on the sharp end of a pin. Didn’t you fail Human Biology?”
“Who needs Human Biology when you can study Latin instead?”
“Latin? What’s that got to do with anything? Didn’t you fail that too?”
“Amo, amas, amat. Well, I didn’t finish the course. We did German instead, sort of an introduction.”
“This is why we shouldn’t talk.”
“What do you mean, talk?”
“This. You always go off at a tangent. You don’t stick to the point. There’s no logic to what you say. You dart around like a demented Mosquito.”
“My French is better than my German.”
“There you go again!”
“Well anyway, conversation doesn’t need to be logical, it’s conversational, that’s why it’s called a conversation.”
“You do my head in you know!”
“Don’t worry, it’s probably just the beer fumes affecting your brain’s capacity to think.”
“MY brain’s capacity to think?”
“Quite.”
“Maybe you’re tired? I’m certainly tired. Yes, suddenly I’m very tired. Perhaps we should just go to bed rather than talk any more?”
“But I’ve not seen you for four days straight.”
“That must be it. I’m out of practice at talking, or talking to you.”
“Conversation. Anyway, out here we say talk ‘with’ rather than talk ‘to.’ Talk ‘to’ implies a one sided lecture.”
“I’m o.k. with that. Tell you what, you just talk away.”
“That only works if you listen.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you want to listen?”
“Er?”
“Well then, conversation is a much better bet.”
“O.k. So where were we?”
“Would you rather die of bread or beer? Which would be worse and why?”
“Are you sure? Is that really where we were? I seem to have lost the point somewhere along the line.”
“Point! That’s it.”
“What’s what?”
“The point. The point was the penicillin principle.”
“Oh yes, the dreaded penicillin principle.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“So?”
“Well, Botulism in bad beer can kill you but the Penicillin that plumes on du pain, will let you live to fight another day.”
“I’ll tell the next Frenchman I see.”
“You don’t know any French.”
“I don’t know anyone French out here either.”
“Well your mum’s Italian. Perhaps you could tell an Italian in your rusty Italian instead?”
“I give up!”
“Oh don’t be daft, your Italian is passable. I don’t know any, Italian that is.”
“Well you’ve certainly killed off any fight I had left in me.”
“Ooo don’t be like that, I was only teasing.”
“Let’s just say that I have new insight into how those murder suicide pacts come about.”

What language do you speak?

http://alien-in-a-foreign-field.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-language-do-you-speak.html