>I think we'd have some long interesting chat, old mate, to pass away the endless months, and I'd end up speaking croatian.

Well I was born into Serbocroatian, and since our Croatian neighbors left and took their rake and returned our ladder, I'm left poorer with just Serbian. I can't vouch that I can speak proper Croatian nowadays. I understand everything there, of course, but I'd never pass for one of them - can't hide the accent, sentence construction and choice of words.

Just add a few Martian years to learn the subtle differences between Serbian and Croatian, and then we can move to finer points in my local dialect :).

> Heaven forfend my crew-mate were Nick (note the subjunctive case there) - straight out the airlock.

Case? C'mon, there are no cases in English :).

Um... Nick who? Mason? I'm amazed that he still reads us :).