        He finished tracing, and stood back from his work.  There were twenty-six characters in the first row, with another twenty-six below that.  She smiled inwardly—a fifty-two character alphabet implied that it had quite sophisticated linguistics.  They were very neatly organized, too: a top row of big letters for bold sounds, and a second row of smaller letters for softer sounds.  Clearly, a lot of thought had gone into its language, which was good.  It would make it much easier to learn.  For all its precision when it came to sound, the Equestrian language had borrowed words from Equuis and Pegos, as well as from the other intelligent races, and was littered with irregular verbs and unexpected plurals.  Undoubtedly, this creature’s language would be much simpler, despite all the different letters she’d have to memorize.