Good points. It's just that Nog appears completely lost with the American he hears. I can read some French but speak none, and would be lost listening to a rapid speaker by any accent - but I'm not trying to attend an organization where I would absolutely need to understand the language. Then again, nor am I dependent on an artificial translation aid for 100% of my daily affairs and since early childhood, so losing such an aid would not send me into linguistic panic...
Jake teaching Nog to read English is a likely and sympathetic scenario regardless of what if any languages Nog can already read. It's just that Star Trek is a bit inconsistent on the matter of reading: Scotty can't read Klingon signage too easily in ST4, but all our DS9 heroes are fluent in the symbology of Cardassian monitor readouts from the day they set foot on the station... Is it just because Cardassian interface designers are so much better than human ones?
Timo Saloniemi
