Once again, Decoder Ring Theater presents another page from the casebook of that Master of Mystery.

That's Sultan of Sleuthing, Martin Bracknell's immortal detective Black Jack Justice, starring Christopher Mott as Jack and Andrea Lyons as Trixie Dixon Girl Detective.

The English language is a funny old thing, my friends.

A patchwork grab bag of influences that draws a little from column A and a little from

just about anywhere else it has landed, traded, conquered, and otherwise done its filthy

business. Latin, Greek, the sweet-talking

romance languages, and the guttural, rough-handed bullies of the Germanic dialect families. They all had

their sway, and we adapted, incorporated, and got on with our day. And a thousand years later,

where is it? The big boss dog happily shoved down the throat of every corner of the globe that wants a piece of the good old US of A.

And what do they get?

A language that has been so many things to so many people that it can't decide what its own rules are.

I thank the merciful forces within the universe that I was born into a family that spoke it as a native tongue,

and as such I was able to climb its steep, jagged peaks while still in the malleable state of infancy,

because I have no idea how I would have approached it as an adult, when I might have tried to approach it with logic and reason.

By way of example, dear friends, consider the homonym, language's cruelest

mistake. Two words, often with entirely different etymological backgrounds, which sound identical

and mean completely different things. The same sounds, occasionally produced by entirely

different combinations of vowels and consonants, all hurtling through the centuries

to reach this single point, mostly so Miss Dixon can be annoyed almost daily by somebody using

the wrong form of their. And if it seems like I am complaining, neighbors, let me assure you

that nothing could be further from the truth. I embrace the oddities of our lexicon as part of our rich cultural heritage.

I would, however, appreciate it if we could stop adding to the English language's inherent quirkiness

...