By PATRICIA YOLLIN, San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nzadi is one of the most obscure tongues in the world. That's exactly why a University of California, Berkeley class has embraced it.

"There's nothing like the joy of discovering a language from scratch," said Cal linguistics Professor Larry Hyman.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The University of California Berkeley is 7,450 miles from Baghdad -- a long way by any measure.

For veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that distance pales compared with the chasm between military and student life. A new class at Cal is trying to help bridge that gap.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A koala is kidnapped. Sheep are molested by a human intruder. An elephant does a headstand on a technician, breaking her pelvis. A tiger ravages its keeper's arm.