Lau was leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed, apparently trying to decide whether Gideon was a purposeful liar or a simple academic quack. Gideon kept trying:

"Let’s say he’d made the sentence even longer-’Just try to move and I kill you now.’ Then he’d try to squeeze all of the first four words into the same time as ‘move.’ It would be "just-try-to-move and I kill-you-now.’ Only Americans use that kind of rhythm, and no matter how well you learn the phonemes-the sounds-of a foreign language, you never get the rhythms exactly right. For example, a Frenchman would use a nice, steady beat throughout the whole sentence. He’d say ‘Just-try, to-move, and-I-kill, you-now.’ A German-"

"What’s my accent?" Lau said suddenly. "Do I speak General American?" The challenge was implicit but clear: Do you have the nerve to say I don’t?

"No, you don’t. There are Chinese overtones. Your individual syllables are a little more separate and even, and naturally there’s a little more emphasis on tone, a little less on stress."

Gideon expected him to be angry; instead, he simply looked even more skeptical.

"Look," said Gideon, "I’m an anthropologist. This is the sort of thing I study." The last and least effective argument of the frustrated teacher, he thought.

"I thought anthropologists studied primitive cultures."

"We do, but linguistics is part of culture. And we study culture in general, not just primitive ones."

Lau thought it over. Suddenly banging on the table with his hand so that Gideon jumped, he said, "I don’t buy it! You’re practically telling me language is inherited, not learned. That’s ridiculous!" His hands chopped the air.