T-Rex: Learning a language is hard! It is especially hard with your first language, when you're a baby who has to figure out an entire grammar and vocabulary just from what people say to you.
T-Rex: It's not just hard: in fact, it may well be impossible!
T-Rex: It turns out that natural languages are so complex that we probably can't figure out all their rules just from hearing words spoken around us, but we CAN approximate these rules and get very close. So the result is we (as learners) end up speaking a language we're able to communicate with, but which is slightly different than those that surround us!
Utahraptor: How slight a difference are we talking about here?
T-Rex: That depends on the learner, I guess!
T-Rex: Rules that are used everyday are going to be more fixed, because there's more of a chance somebody will correct you. But less-frequent parts will be more malleable, which explains why languages evolve so quickly!
Utahraptor: Because a language is never passed down, just an approximation of a language.
T-Rex: Yep! Of course this has changed a little with the advent of grammar books and formal schooling, but it's still there. For example, I might think the word 'tenet' is enraging!
Off panel: Really? You think 'tenet' is-
T-Rex: Screw you!!
