[Translate the following as accurately as you can into any of the three or four Ancient Phictish Languages.]

1. Basic

Everything is just this.

Too much happens.
[NB. Take care to avoid any suggestion of: Too much happens here.]

Proud to be a former country!

Nothing runs up against Death.
[NB. Render this uncertain phrase in at least three quite distinct forms. Then do the same for: Everything is the result of trivial causes.]

Please do not be somebody else, darling.
[Take particular care to avoid: Please do not remember somebody else, darling.]

Perhaps nothing is more difficult, Hemlut, than simply telling the truth about ordinary life.

Why did it take me so long to realise I was more or less completely wasting my time?

It is so tragic to be limited by the details of mere reality.

I get a very pronounced sense that there is someone else in the room right now.

But surely we are all somebody else, Father?

I have never sought to disguise the fact, darling, that I am pretty much past caring.

So, it must presumably have been a heart problem all along!

A cold, unforgiving, private silence spread out insidiously over morning after morning after morning.


2. Intermediate

But surely, Uncle Frankie, the Universe must always be ...