Marks School Experiance

by Susan Janet Barker

  

Chapter 4

Feeling a bit nervous Susan entered the classroom and sat down next to Sarah, and glanced around the room to see who else was in the class and as she gazed past the doorway, she saw Katie walk in and look around for somewhere to sit.

"Over here Katie" Susan called out thinking If I have to play the exchange student, I might as well learn what it is al about from one.

Looking towards the person who had called her name, Katie saw Susan waving from across the room and walked over and sat beside her.

"Hi Susan how are you doing?"

"A bit nervous but ok at the moment, you?"

"About the same, but I am sure it will pass once I get used to this new school."

"I know what you mean, what lessons are you taking?"

Katie took out her school time table and showed it to Susan, causing Susan to state "It looks like we are in the same classes Katie, "I'll talk to you later as the teacher has just come in."

"Ok, talk later."

Susan didn't know how she was going to do in this class as her English was ok but not great, but she was willing to give it a go.

"Ok class, please quieten down and lets begin, Languages, all countries have them but most are different to each other, I am not going to teach you the different languages themselves but instead I will teach you how to understand a new language from scratch."

"I will leave this message on the board for the duration of the of the morning, and at the end I will ask the class if anyone would like to have a go at translating it."

XLMW MW XLI PERKYEKI SJ XLI SPSGOW

"If you all brake up into groups of three, I will explain how languages while different are similar, most language alphabets are made up of twenty six letters and out of those letters you will find that some of the letters will appear more than once in a line of text."

"To help you understand the principle better, I will show you an example."

The example is:

RFC BME GQ ZPMUL

"While it looks like it is a load of gibberish to most people, it is actually a message that just needs decoding to understand, what do codes have to do with learning a new language I can tell you are thinking."

"Well the answer is that all letters are a code if you do not know how to read them and the message, but as I said at the beginning all languages are different and once you understand the basics you will be able to translate most of them."

"This example we will do together so that you will understand how it works, always start with the smallest words if there are any spaces in the text as it will make decoding the message easier."

"In the case of our example the smallest word is GQ, so anyone what two letter words do you know?"

Katie raised her hand and said "Or Sir."

"Ok Katie" and he wrote or on the board below GQ, "Anyone else?"

Someone else said "is Sir" and another said "at Sir" and soon the board looked like:

RFC BME GQ ZPMUL

OR

IS

AT

"Ok class, what about three letter words?"

And soon the board looked like:

RFC BME GQ ZPMUL

HOT HOT OR

CAT CAT IS

DOG DOG AT

HIT HIT

SIT SIT

HAT HAT

EAT EAT

THE THE

"Ok class out of those words, witch ones make more sense?"

Susan raised her hand and said "Sir I think it is The Dog Is or The Cat Is?"

Well it dose seam to make a sort of sense so we will use them for the moment."

RFC BME GQ ZPMUL

The Dog Is O

The Cat Is A

"As you can see the last word has an m in the middle of it, and we also have a m in the second word, it has to be the same letter, so it is either a A or and O."

"It is hard to work out the complete alphabet with such a short line of text, but the clue to solving it is in the text themselves, the clue is called a key and all codes and languages have them, if you know the key you can understand the code and the language."

"The key in this line of text are the letters themselves or more importantly what letters are used to replace the letters of the message."

"Dose anyone want to have a go?" Seeing no hands in the air he said "ok class this is the solution, the letters in the message are replaced with a letter two spaces before it in the alphabet so the message translates as follows."

"RFC BME GQ ZPMUL"

"Is actually saying"

"The Dog Is Brown"

"Because going back two letters in the alphabet from the B puts you before the alphabet starts, it just carries on from the Z and goes down the alphabet like z,y,x,w and so on."

"Now that you have a basic understanding of languages, work in your groups and see if you can translate the message on the board."

Sarah joined Susan and Katie to form there group of three and talked and tried to solve the problem, and soon had some of the problem worked out, and by gazing around the room it was soon clear that none of them were having much more luck."

"This is a lot harder than it looks Sarah" Katie said.

"I know Katie but I just can not get it to make any sense, I mean I am trying to sort it but I am just not getting anywhere."

Susan had not said much for a while as she was thinking about some other things, and soon realised that Sarah was asking her a question, "sorry Sarah what was that?"

"I was saying it looked like you had tuned out for a while, and it you would tune back into this problem as we can not solve it at the moment."

"Ok let me have a look at it and see if I can get anywhere with it."

Turning the paper around, Susan saw what the girls had managed to do.

XLMW MW XLI PERKYLKI SJ XLI SPSGOW

THIS IS THE E OF THE O O

After looking at it for a few minuets Sarah asked "do you see anything Susan?"

"Yes I think that I do Sarah, it looks so obvious can you guys not see it?"

After glancing to Katie who shook her head sideways, Sarah said with a slight frown "no Susan we can not see it, will you finish it for us?"

"Ok Guys here goes."

XLMW MW XLI PERKYLKI SJ XLI SPSGOW

THIS IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE OLOCKS

"That looks right Susan", Sarah said, how did you figure it out?"

"I don't know Sarah, it just came to me as I looked at it, maybe we can work out the key now that we know the message?"

They wrote the alphabet out and soon discovered that the key was that the message letters were replaced with letters four spaces ahead of themselves, and soon it was the end of the lesson and Mr Brown was surprised that any of the students had managed to crack her code and explained that it was just an example that he had made up.

After Lunch it was Maths and History but they progressed just as Susan remembered them and time seemed to go slowly.

  

  

  

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