I've heard that the greatest challenge facing linguists today lies not in understanding how the brain encodes language, nor in mapping the lexicons of the world's vanishing dialects, nor in any other such grinding academic chore.

For the No. 1 linguistic challenge is a world beyond all that. In layman's terms, it is defined simply as . . . how to render the theme to Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" in the English alphabet.

I mean, do you write it as, "mee-mee-mee-mee-mee-mee-mee-mee?" Or as, "eedee-beebee-eedee-beebee-eedee-beebee?" Or in some other confounded way?