"It's okay. I probably shouldn't start a language first week of school anyway, I'll skip all my lessons practicing because languages are more interesting."

"Well, you wouldn't have anyone but me to practice with so you'd have some time left over, I want to learn magic."

"Language is pretty magical. You can just move your tongue and make anyone in the area aware of really complicated thoughts, or you can represent them on parchment and achieve the same thing - did you know for a long time after the invention of writing people only read aloud, reading silently didn't become common until a thousand years later..."

"I didn't know that, that's weird!"

"There's a biography of this ancient Greek guy that says 'and he read without sound and without even his tongue moving, it really creeped everyone out!'"

"Were they just sounding things out - what about in, in China -"

"I don't know about in China! And they must have been! For a thousand years!"

"But you can't sound things out in Chinese! I think."

"You can't?"

"I might be remembering wrong but I think they have symbols for words not sounds?"

"Huh! They probably didn't have that problem then - though sounds is obviously the superior way to do written language -"

"They must have some reason to do it that way, but I don't see what it would be."

"Could just be - people keep things the way they always were, even if they weren't that way for a good reason."

"It had to start somehow though."

"I mean, if you were a sort of small thinker, and trying to invent writing, you might just think 'oh, this symbol will mean this word I need, and this symbol this word...', you might not think about what if people tried using it for the whole language, what if the language changed, how long does it take to learn..."

"I guess that could be it."

"Still silly. You should invent an alphabet for Igbo so no one else does and messes it up."

"A lot of languages share English letters and that's been working fine for me. Besides, I'm not sure anyone would pay attention if I invented an alphabet."

"You might have to throw a lot of gold around, get all the signs done in your alphabet, get things transcribed and printed..."

"I do not have a lot of gold to throw around and have only been to Africa one time."

"Strict parents? They'll loosen up about money if you're responsible with it."

"...not everybody's family has a lot of gold to throw around either."

"Well, no, but you corrected me about yours being important."

"I don't know about you but when I think 'Igboland' I don't think 'that's where rich people live'."

"So then you might not have to throw that much gold around, even."