Words and Whistles II

[Lani Stranger]

48th of Fall, 518AV

When Lani found herself at Val’s door again, she held a small pint of honey in her hand. It had cost her more than the tea, but it was a price she was happy to pay for the lessons. After their small conversation about his preference for honey last time, Lani was making sure she remained stocked. The Avora beekeeper had given her an odd look at the four pints she had bought, but she wanted to make sure she was stocked just in case.

Lani reached her hand up to rap the door with a quick three-note tune, and listened to the chorus of Val’s birds that echoed inside the dwelling to tell the old man of her arrival. She knew nothing about birds, but they didn’t feel defensive this time, or at least she was not intimidated by them, but in fact was looking forward to them. When Val opened the door, looking up at the tall mixed blood with an expected grin. ”Lani, hello dear. Come in, come in.”

”Hello Val.” She said, offering her small umber jar forward before he could turn completely away from her. His sky-blue Inartan eyes lit up for a tick.

”Oh, so you’ve agreed to feed my habit?”

”Of course! You’re feeding mine.” She grinned, remembering how she had asked him to also begin teaching her Nader-Canoch, even though he claimed to barely know the ancient language. She hadn’t had much else to do with her time than practice the languages, the usual social butterfly that was Lani was intimidated out of spending her free time doing fun things with the other Inartan Chiet, instead opting to sit in her room and talk to herself in the mirror in a foreign language. Some might call her crazy, but the thought had hardly occurred to Lani.

”Two chattering crows.” He said the dismissive phrase in Nari, and she wondered what it meant, but didn’t ask. Val now turned to enter the dwelling, and Lani followed him in, not closing the door as she hadn’t last time. Today, Val had already prepared tea, as they had set a meeting time, and Lani set the honey down on the table. In a few ticks, Val had joined her, two mugs and now a spoon for the honey. He did not wait, uncapping the jar and scooping out a hefty spoonful for his mug, before motioning towards Lani.

”Would you please gather a parchment and an ink pen from the desk for today?” Val asked, and Lani obliged, stopping by his desk before sitting down at the table with him. It was a little cluttered, although she could see where he kept his fresh supplies. The half-Eypharian carefully selected a single parchment, and the quill and inkwell that they had used last time. She returned to the table, and set it down before taking her seat.

[Lani Stranger]

”So, I hope you have been practicing using the phrases I taught you last time?” Val asked, seemingly more prepared to instruct her today than he had been last time. It made her happy that he seemed happy to teach her, and she was not about to mess this up for herself.

”I have! I learned the Nari words for scroll, horse, dog, bed, fire, parchment-” She began listing the words she was most competent with from memory, able to spit out a fair amount before she had to pause, only to take a breath. Val interjected at that point, raising his hands and calming her words down, so she paused, and looked at him, waiting for him to say something. He let the silence drag for a tick or two and then spoke.

”How is the weather?” He spoke in Nari, slow enough that Lani was able to put together what he was saying without asking him to repeat himself. Lani raised a single eyebrow, utterly confused as to why he asked the question suddenly, switching the subject.

”Cold and windy…” She answered instinctively in common before realizing he probably wanted a Nari response. ”Cold and… how do you say ‘windy’?” She corrected herself speaking in Nari now, and then asking the question for the word she did not yet know.

”Windy.” He spoke, a small mischievous grin settling on his face. When he began spelling the word, Lani quickly grabbed the ink well, uncorking it and positioning the parchment in front of her. She dipped the quill and started scribbling. Val waited patiently until she was done, as he usually did, and when she looked up at him, expectantly, he chuckled. She was waiting for a lesson, but he seemed to want to have a conversation.

”You’re a studious girl, I imagine you did not have a very adventurous childhood.” He commented, and Lani frowned, because the opposite was in fact true. She had only learned to read and write in common and Kontinese a few years ago, prior to it she had never considered a educator's life, and had been instead staring down the medicinal path for her life choice. The flip had been a surprise, but welcome, as she had always been hungry for knowledge. She may not have known it at a young age like her dear friend Madeira, but she had found that hunger in time. This was all that Val had seen of her, of course.

”I am interested in learning languages, Val.” Lani spoke her words in common and with measure, trying not to offend the Avora, but a little curious of his words. ”I like to know things.”

”And you will, but you must be patient. Learn the language naturally, it will come to you. Let us base our lessons off of organic material instead of attempting to shove things into your head that you may not ever encounter in everyday conversation.” Val explained, and Lani lost her frown, now understanding what Val was doing. He was not asking her the weather because he genuinely wanted to have small talk with the foreigner, but because she needed to learn how to speak those phrases in Nari. In an effort to show him she understood, she tapped the quill on the inside of the ink well, dislodging any extra ink, and then set it horizontally on the paper. She leaned back in her chair, and attempted to continue the conversation, although her fingers itched to write down every little thing.

[Lani Stranger]

”Is the weather… cold and windy.” She said the Nari words carefully, turning them into a statement. She used the words that Val had used to ask the question, and hoped that it turned into a sentence.

”I believe you are trying to say: ‘The weather is cold and windy.’” Val corrected her, and Lani couldn’t help but reach forward for the pen again, scratching the ink into the parchment as she copied what he said.

”The weather is cold and windy.” She corrected herself, saying the words with as even clarity as she could manage. She had no doubt that her Nari was thickly accented, but Val seemed to have little trouble with it. Then again this was a quiet studious place where she could take her time speaking and listening, a luxury she was not afforded in other parts of Mt. Skyinarta.

”And if the weather was nice outside, what would you say?” Val asked, and Lani thought over the words she wanted to use. She knew the opposite of cold was warm, but she did not know the Nari word for sunny.

”How do you say ‘sunny’?” She asked, and Val easily obliged, sharing the word with her. Lani nodded, taking a moment to write out the sentence she wanted to use before speaking it. She essentially copied the sentence they had just used, but switched out the adjectives where she needed to.

”The weather is warm and sunny.” She spoke aloud, penning in the translation of the phrase right below it. Her Nari was slow and wobbly. She didn't seem to whistle all the words quite right, but Val seemed to understand her well enough.

”Very good, you seem to have located the adjectives in the sentence.”

”Yes, and switched them out for the other ones, using the same sentence structure, was that okay?” She asked, looking up to the old man and hoping that he had not expected her to come up with a whole new sentence, she wasn’t sure she was advanced enough for that.

”That is fine, there is a lot of memorization of phrases in the beginning, but we do want to work on you being able to identify the various words that make up a sentence so that when I can start teaching you how to put sentences together, likely next season, you will understand what I am talking about. Now, what is the question you would ask me next if we were talking about weather?”

”How do you like this weather?” Lani asked in Common, seeing if he thought so too.

”Yes, but in Nari.”

”Oh, right. How, uhhh. How do you say ‘do’?” Lani asked, realizing she was getting ahead of herself, and was not forming the sentence in her brain like she thought she was supposed to.

”In this context, you would say ‘do you’ together. So it would be do you.” He answered, and she nodded, deciding to write the sentence she intended to say down again before saying it. She had to cross out a word twice, but once she wrote the final sentence, she spoke it.

”How do you like that weather?” She asked, looking up at him.

”’This’ not ‘that’.” He corrected her in common, and she paused, scraping her mind for the vocabulary difference between ‘this’ and ‘that’. She knew they had different Nari words, but she couldn’t recall the word for this. It was a little frustrating that every little detail needed to be corrected, but she would rather get one or two phrases perfect and than to learn them halfway and have to relearn them later.

”I forgot how to say it.” She admitted.

”This.” Val said simply, not shaming her for forgetting the word.

She repeated the word a couple times, tasting it on her tongue and then editing in the correct word into the sentence. ”How do you like this weather?” She repeated the sentence correctly now, looking at Val expectantly. He gave a soft smile, and then answered.

”I do not like this weather.” He trilled his answer in Nari, speaking slow and clear enough that she could recognize the sentence to be similiar to the question she just asked, but there were other parts in it. A negative, it seemed. Then, Val switched to common, following his casual answer with a command. ”Repeat that.”

”I do… not like this weather.” She repeated his words, and he nodded. Suddenly the old man swiped the paper out from underneath her hands. The ink from her last sentence hadn’t been dry so it smudged, and she frowned, but Val’s mischievous smile was back, he had a plan.

[Lani Stranger]

”Now let’s have that simple exchange again, but without your notes.” He said, and Lani tried not to frown.

”But I don’t think I have it memorized yet.”

”I’m sure you don’t if you look negatively on it.” He said, holding the paper up to hide his grin, but his eyes showed everything. Lani sighed, waiting for him to give her the first question.

”How is the weather?” He trilled in perfect Nari, and she could hear his amused grin that he held behind the parchment.

”The weather is cold and windy.” She answered, using the first phrase like a pro. She had made it up and been corrected on it, rather than repeated after him, and gotten a chance to use it with other adjectives which helped cement it into her mind.

”How do you like this weather?” He asked then, and Lani grinned a little, rolling her eyes at how easy it seemed.

”I do not like this weather.” She answered, and he let the paper drop from covering his mouth, still grinning amused.

”Good, now you ask the questions.” He said, and Lani paused, mind racing to try and remember the questions he had asked. She almost didn’t expect the sudden switch up, because she had really only practiced the answers, not the questions. He saw her freeze and chuckled a bit before returning to patiently waiting.

”How is… a weather?”

”Use the definitive article: ‘the’ not ‘a’.” He corrected her, and her cheeks immediately started to warm. She hated when she was wrong. Lani dipped the quill and then began writing down the definite article.

"And the opposite of a definite article is a....?" She asked, clearly focusing on the small details of the grammar than the actual conversation like he wanted. Val sighed, clearly trying to force the studious girl out of her focused ways, but answered her question regardless. She penned in the definite and infinite articles in Nari that she knew and then carefully wiped the tip of her quill and set it down again, looking up at Val with a blank face before remembering she was supposed to be leading the conversation now.

”How is... the weather?” She repeated the correct pronunciation of the sentence, eyeing the paper with her small list of articles to make sure she was getting it right. She was already beginning to work on forming the next question while he answered her.

”It is cold and cloudy.” He answered, using a slightly different answer than she had, but she still understood the Nari well enough.

”Do… you like a- the weather?” She asked, stumbling on the word order a slight bit, before repeating and correcting herself. ”Do you like the weather?” She said again, more clear, and Val nodded.

”I do.” She rolled her eyes at him again. Surely he didn’t actually like the weather and was just humoring her for the lesson.

[Lani Stranger]

”Do you really?” She asked in common, and he raised a finger, tapping the tip of his noise to remind her to use Nari.

”Do you… actual?” She asked, slower now. She did not recall the Nari equivalent for 'really', but instead searched her small word banks for a synonym that might work instead. She didn't think it was correct, but Val didn't immediate point it out and correct her. This either meant she was closer than she thought, or he was trying to keep her from picking up her quill which would keep her from the smooth conversation he wanted.

”I actually do, it makes it cozier inside the Volcano where it is warm and still.” He answered her in common so she understood him, and Lani nodded, raising her eyebrows at the truthful answer. She had caught his use of the word she had tried and how it had differed in the sentence. It was similar to the common word for 'really' but different enough for her to notice. She couldn't help but pick up the quill and scribble it down, but tried to keep her eyes on Val as if the notes were not her priority at the moment.

”Now, you said something earlier that I want to teach you how to say in Nari, because I think it will come in handy. You said you had forgotten how to say something. If I teach you that phrase, you can use it instead of ‘How do you say’ when you can, which will give you some options to work with when learning new words and phrases during your everyday life. Now, how did you say it.”

”Umm, ‘I forgot how to say that’.” She spoke the common words for the phrase she had uttered earlier, and Val seemed to digest them quickly, able to spout out a Nari version as soon as the last word left her mouth.

”Okay, in Nari it will simply be ‘I forgot how to say that’.” Val shared, and then paused while Lani wrote it down.

”I forgot how to say that.” She repeated, and then looked up. ”Can I replace ‘that’ with a common word that I cannot remember the Nari word for? Would that still be grammatically correct?” She asked before scribbling the direct translation beneath the Nari words. She was starting to get a better grasp on the different parts that made up the sentence and when was appropriate to switch them out for other things. The more phrases the memorized, the more she realized how the typical Nari sentence structures were laid out.

”Actually, yes, you can. That would work very well.” He confirmed her curiosity, clearly not having thought of it himself.

”Now, I think we should go over some adjectives now, so you can fill in adjectives into sentences and phrases you hear. We aren’t quite to the grammaticism of Nari in this season, but as you are starting to recognize the parts of a sentence, we will be soon, so this will help you practice.” Val said, tapping the blank space on her scrap paper to encourage her to begin to write. ”Just like the nouns, why don’t you go ahead and list a few that you know and we will see if you are correct before teaching you some that you don’t know yet but use in life.” Lani nodded, now feeling the familiar form of lessons that Val was giving her.

”Warm, cold, hard, soft, light, heavy…” She pronounced her Nari words slowly, sounding them out as she wrote them. Occasionally Val would correct her on spelling, but otherwise let her list out a prominent amount of her adjectives that she knew. She was quick to ask for more, mostly ones that pertained to her work in the Enclave or the Stables. They continued on about it for some time before she ran out of questions to ask, and Val seemed eager to be done with the mentally strenuous work.

Note :

-0.1 Pinions for honey

Word Count: 2,511

[Oresnya Cacao]

Grades!

Lani!

Skills

● Hostessing +1
● Linguistics +4
● Logic +1
● Persuasion +1
● Planning +1
● Rhetoric +1
● Writing +3

Lores
● Nari Phrase: Two chattering crows
● Nari: Conversational Phrases
● Nari: Common Adjectives
● Linguistics: Conversations are beneficial for learning language
● Lani: Once considered medicine for a career
● Linguistics: Identifying parts of sentences
● Nari: Pronouns
● Linguistics: Repetition makes perfect
● Nari: Articles
● Nari Phrase: I forgot how to say...

Comments

Lani, as your language and involvement with the language progresses, I feel like there are less lore and less skills that I can give you, but if you feel I missed something, or just want a little something extra or specific out of this grade (or previous ones), just let me know. Thanks again for the read.