Once upon a time, in the dim and distant past, a little Jewish child asked, "Mommy, Daddy, why do people from different countries talk funny?" And the response came from an even dimmer and more distant past — the story of the Tower of Babel that we find in chapter 11 of Genesis. Human pride had decided it would make a name for itself and would build a city and a tower that would be a gateway to heaven; God would not allow such presumption so the speech of the workers was confused, they fell to bickering among themselves, dispersed over all the earth, and never did complete the tower. And that is why Germans do not understand French, Italians do not understand Chinese, Greeks do not understand English, and nobody understands teenagers!

To this day, we have problems communicating with one a…