Have you recently listened to people speaking unfamiliar languages? If you haven’t, turn on your radio or TV set, select a station from another country, and within minutes you will hit a broadcast with loquacious individuals talking all the time. Alternatively, if you live in a metropolis, go down onto the streets and spot groups of animated people speaking foreign languages. Listen attentively. You will soon notice that humans produce continuous streams of uninterrupted speech. The overall impression? Phonological porridge, polenta, bouillie. For the non-initiated listener, it is hard to grasp that there is much structure to such seemingly random proliferation of sound. The reality is different, of course. Any single language you come across on Earth is as differentiated, distinguished, beautiful, and funny as your native language. Impenetrable as foreign languages appear to be, on the scale of a human lifetime, they are just around the corner - give them two or three years, and any of them is yours. It is a refreshing thought that all humans are brothers and sisters in language.