If eighteenth century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had seen Curiosity's images of the red planet he would not have been rushing to sign up for evening classes in Martian. JJ believed that language sprang from man's interaction with his environment and that the landscape and climate of that environment impacted on and shaped the language. The conclusion of his argument was that language arose in the Mediterranean and was a beautiful, lilting affair that mirrored its halcyon surroundings. As it traveled North it was stripped of its romance and became a harsh, loveless thing.
Rousseau was a French wanker and probably just came up with this theory to add fuel to his hatred of the northern races who, he felt, had been made barbaric by their climes. It's thanks to Rousseau's insight though that NASA have been able to equip their Mars rover with a basic phrasebook. So suck on those frogs' legs Rousseau and go play pattonk with your garlicky ballbag.
By studying previous photograph's of the Martian landscape NASA have been able to guess at the grammatical structure and some simple items of vocabulary that would arise from it. To say 'Hello' in Martian you need to make a sound like a slow-motion vomit. Asking 'take me to your leader' sounds like a maggot's drawn out fart. Verbs are placed at the end of the sentence following the one to which they apply. Weirdly, the writing system that NASA's linguistic supercomputer has predicted looks a lot like a string of emoticons and hashtags. This point has led to fears that the Martians may already be brainwashing our children by teaching them their language.
So far Curiosity has only used its phrasebook once to ask for directions to the nearest village. It turned out it had been speaking to a rock, a fact only discovered after it had already followed the inert rock's directions and turned left at the missile factory when it should have gone right.
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