Brain Cpabilities

I always love finding out things the brain can do, especially things I think would be really hard that turn out to be unexpectedly reasonable.  After about a year of typing on two different keyboards, one with an American layout and one with a German layout I no longer make mistakes and can type on either one interchangeably.  At the beginning this was unnerving and frustrating to the point where I considered changing out the keyboard at work to an American one, but then I would not have been able to write to anyone like Jörg or Frau Bürger who makes the travel arrangements and can make me get up for crazy early flights.

This reminds me of one of the brain surprises that amazed me when I was in high school.  Our group of friends began using an alternate alphabet, one with no Arabic letters, to pass secret notes in class.  It was titled Noxmaltian and looked something like:

After remembering what a big deal it was to learn the alphabet when starting school it seemed quite impossible to be faced with learning a second one within the same lifetime.  It turns out the brain is quite good with this.  All it takes is a three page letter to decode and the brain already begins to associate phonetic sounds with the shapes.  After about three more secret notes it is no longer necessary to transcribe such things as they can be pronounced just like normal words.  Try it; it's fun, especially if you have strict teachers or cannot trust your neighbors ;)