All right, all right, our author introduces an intermediate being, one who can pronounce both English and Antarian lingua franca . This critter, coincidentally enough, is friendly to our hero. There, that should solve the mess. Our new character should be able to get around the difficulties in grammar and semantics that impede the communication. Grammar is a real problem.
Some terrestrial tongues are almost impossible to learn without long experience.
Chinese, for instance, lacks any past, present or future tenses. Past tense is expressed by certain particles added to the verb. In some cases these particles express accent on the thought, and in other places they do not even express past tense. In hieroglyphic, many things necessary to English are left out. Verbs are not expressed in some places, subjects are unexpressed in others.