AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 351
ARES III SOL 346
“A-HA!”
Spitfire jabbed her hoof at the computer screen. “Starlight always talk ‘need to know how to talk write proper.’ So humans understand. But here a human writer, writes bad. On purpose!”
They were midway through Guards! Guards! On the screen, Watch Captain Samuel Vimes had engaged in the traditional police procedural device of writing down facts in the hopes of making a connection. But since the book was a fantasy book and involved a dragon that appeared and disappeared by magic, the policeman’s notes were written in a bad Ye Olde Langueuage. (Though, admittedly, not using any actual bad language.)
“Look! Look at this! He even can’t find word! ‘I-Time: The drag-gone was not a Mechanical devize, yettie surely no wiz-zard has the power to create a beas-tee of that mag- mag—magnight- size.’ What he trying say anyway?”
“Magnitude,” Starlight Glimmer muttered. When that got a blank look, she said in Equestrian, “Magnitude.”
“Oh. I don’t use that word even in Equestrian, let alone English.” Spitfire shrugged and shifted back to English and back to her point. “This proves you don’t need perfect English! Not when humans get it wrong!”
“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said quietly, “do you ever read the Wonderbolt-“ she used the Equestrian name- “-records from about, oh, four hundred years ago?”
“Yes! When I must!” Spitfire replied. “Annoying! Ponies not know spelling then! Words all… weird! Make me nuts reading…” The light dawned, and Spitfire looked down to the computer screen, then back at Cherry Berry. Borrowing a phrase she’d heard Mark use several times, she said, “I see what you did there.”
“Oh, it’s better than that,” Starlight Glimmer said. “The character writing those notes grew up poor and on the streets in a place with no public education, not even a one-room school like Ponyville’s.”
“A one room schoolhouse?” Mark asked. “You still have that kind of thing? How big is Ponyville anyway?”
“Not important just now,” Starlight said. “My point is, Captain Vimes has every excuse to have bad grammar, but he’s trying. He uses archaic- that’s very old- words and spelling, even though he doesn’t talk like that, because he thinks that’s how educated people write. And the author, Mr. Pratchett, knows exactly when and how to break the rules of grammar and spelling to make this effect work. That’s what knowing a language can do for you!”
“Right,” Spitfire scoffed. “Didn’t mean to write book on Mars.”
“Can we get back to reading the book now?” Cherry Berry asked.
“Just a minute,” Mark said. “I want to go back to public education not being important.”
Spitfire pulled the computer back to herself and began reading aloud- and very loud- until Mark gave up on any attempt to investigate the educational system of the ponies.