Kris an’ Murphy: More Cs-ing

Murphy: “We get the students back next week.”

Kris: “Doin’ our jobs, collectin’ our pay, slip slidin’ away. How do the enrollments look?”

Murphy: “Strong. Not as many foreign students though.”

Kris: “Thank you, US voter. Can’t have any of the world’s best and brightest interfering with our Mediocracy, now can we?”

Murphy: “Or our MediAcracy. But since we lost our chance to do anything about this almost two years ago now, we may as well look on the bright side as much as we can. We’re actually doing these students a favor.”

Kris: “How so?”

Murphy: “By not subjecting them to our language. Consider this I before E business.”

Kris: “I thought we put that fake rule out to pasture a long time ago.”

Murphy: “We did. But that’s not the half of it. Consider the phrase ‘when you heinously seize your weird foreign neighbor’s feisty beige heifer’.”

Kris: “Do I have to?”

Murphy: “Yes, it is on the test!”

Kris: “Touché.”

Murphy: “Which our foreign students would probably pass, unlike our domestic ones. Despite the fact, that in languages from civilization, a letter combination like ‘ei’ would always have the same sound. Correct?”

Kris: “Near enough.”

Murphy: “So what do we have to offer them? ‘When yo …'”

Kris: “STOP!!!”

Murphy: “Um …”

Kris: “I haven’t finished putting in my earplugs yet!”

Murphy: “Don’t bother, they won’t help. ‘When you hAYnously sEEze your wEErd forIN nAYbor’s fEYEsty bAYge hEHfer.’ That’s five, count ’em, five different sounds for the combination ‘ei’ in the same sentence, with no clues from context which sound belongs to which word.”

Kris: “Well, hey, Murphy, or should I say Brian, since you’re the one insisting that we look at the bright side of things …”

Murphy: “Yes …?”

Kris: “At least the AY and the EE sounds appear more than once each.”

Murphy: “Weak evidence that the language is not totally random.”

Kris: “Which cuts down a little bit on the rote memorization without which nobody survives exposure to English.”

Murphy: “Like how our students don’t survive it on their social media posts?”

Kris: “Like how our government officials don’t survive it on their official online publications.”

Murphy: “Oy. We order the wine yet?”

Kris: “No.”

Murphy: “Don’t. We need something stronger. Whiskey.”

Kris: “Or Victory Gin?”

Murphy: “Don’t even.”