Dale nodded. More words would be helpful. It was discouraging how few he knew. In a movie, he’d have already been fluent, but it really wasn’t that easy. Especially when there wasn’t a handy translation phrasebook or linguistic software available. He’d heard ads for Rosetta Stone—did it really work? And if it did, how soon would they be offering CDs in the ponies’ language? Did the ponies have their own version? Maybe they did—that one book Lyra had given him had what looked like a bunch of different languages. Would he be expected to know all of them? He hoped not. Maybe Lyra was a linguist; she was picking up English well enough.