If everybody spoke Perl, who would be the lexer? If you use diagnostics, will a voice from the air say:

Argument "speak" isn't numeric in eq line 5 (#1)

    (W) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that
    expected a numeric value instead.  If you're fortunate the message
    will identify which operator was so unfortunate.

I have a wiry brain/each eye a camera Robot Tourist by Ten Benson