It turned out that the theory of meaning that would work best for the Martians was a “theory of truth” that gave the truth conditions for every sentence. The solution would look like a series of propositions having the form, “‘Snow is white’ is true iff snow is white.” The professor wrote this sentence on the board during nearly every class. Outside the window, snow piled deeper and deeper.

In Russian class, nobody cared about truth conditions. We all said, “I have five brothers.”