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Post by Renathan on Nov 11, 2021 17:30:39 GMT -6
It was on a particularly bitterly cold day in Fall whenever Renathan was visiting Mintaka; sitting on a flat rock while talking to him about nothing in particular whenever the relatively small Lashak asks him if he could teach him how to read and write in Common. Whenever Renathan looked a bit surprised (Mintaka could tell at this point even beyond the russet mammalian's mask) Mintaka admitted that even though he had been shown how to read and write in common long before, when he was adopted from the Rookery, he had long since forgotten the skill (he used Draconic much more often in writing around here, after all) and needed to be refreshed.
"That's great, Mintaka! We'll work on it." Renathan answered, happy to oblige. He was sure on his next return to bring plenty of materials, including books, and the pair worked to find an area with soft sand to practice writing by-claw. Mintaka looked very eager to get started.
[1] - [Start; Foreign Script (Common)] [Renathan is using Sever Bond at the Cost of 4 MP for the Entirety of this Endeavor]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 23, 2021 13:48:16 GMT -6
Renathan was anything if not very patient, but he needed to know about how much Mintaka may have remembered from the old lessons from long before. "Do you... Remember any letters?" He asks, quickly working in the sand himself to write the common letter 'A'. Mintaka turns his head to look at it, and then he replicated it with a claw, having watched Renathan make the symbol before. He copied the movements well enough, and the letter did come out looking quite a bit better than it should have had- had it been his first time. "I remember this one... Ayyy?" He says. "The first one, right?" Mintaka asks, giving it another once over with a claw.
The russet mammalian nods. "Yeah, that's 'A', the first one. So you were taught the alphabet? Do you remember it well enough to recite it?" It wasn't uncommon for kids to be taught the 'alphabet' first in the Labs City.
[2]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 23, 2021 13:52:54 GMT -6
Mintaka's face is blank for a moment, smoothing out the few wrinkles that had began to develop in the corners of his eyes before he'd been bonded. "Hmm..." His voice rumbles for a moment as he pushes it through his nose and mouth, considering the answer. "A..." He starts, knowing that one. Renathan is patient, his face covered by his mask. He wants to help, but the second he opens his mouth Mintaka raises a claw. "No, I want to do it myself." He seems to search inwardly for the answer after that, and the mammalian closed his mouth.
"A... B-bee? Uh, C." Mintaka goes.
"Do you remember what B and C look like?" Renathan asked. "Let's do them as we go through it, so that we can refresh your memory." The mammalian smiles.
Mintaka stalls for a moment, and then nods. It was reasonable to suggest that, of course. "B was like... A stick- and two humps, like camels?"
[3]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 23, 2021 14:04:46 GMT -6
Mintaka reaches down with some hesitancy, one of his claws tentatively put to the dusty sand and then he quietly tried to make the shape of the 'B' that he remembered. It was mostly right. "Good, good..." Renathan said. "It's right, though the humps connect to the line, right here." Renathan connects the two. "Let's try again." He had a sneaking suspicion that most of the issues Mintaka had now were entirely just slight forgetfulness from disuse and definite lack of confidence.
"A, which looks like this." Renathan says, showing off the shape in the sand. "And B, like this..." He did the same as before- "And This is C." Once again, he writes the numeral.
Mintaka looks quite amused at that shape. "C is easy." He says, making the shape in the sand. "I remember C." His voice sounds a little fond.
"How long has it been, Mintaka? Oh, you'll like D's shape too, then." The mammalian makes a 'D' in the Sand beside the C.
[4]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 23, 2021 14:09:44 GMT -6
Mintaka replicates the shape of D and said- "F is next, or is it uh... Vee?" He tilts his head. Then he chuckles to himself, upon Renathan shaking his head. "V is at the end, you were thinking E... But yeah, F is next." He makes the shape for F next to the D that he'd just made. Mintaka replicates the shape of it, and then answers the question. "I was scarcely out of the Rookery, very young, very young..." He repeats himself. "Not quite on the wing yet, either, at the time." He says. "I learned common well before I learned the language of my people." He admits, his voice dripping with an emotion that Renathan can only place due to knowing him so well- wistfulness.
"So you're just out of use, then. That's good, that means we'll be able to get you back to writing again."
At that, they went through the next few letters much as they had before, saying the letter and then writing it, with Mintaka copying his movements.
[5]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 24, 2021 23:20:10 GMT -6
There were a few letters that Mintaka remembered well, and a few that he'd forgotten entirely. He had difficulty figuring out M and N, and again seemed to have issues with W and Z. Renathan understood the sensation that made those letters particularly difficult, if he remembered properly he also had difficulty with those same ones whenever he was learning Common. All the zig-zag letters were the worst. It was quite unlike his own native tongue, and what little he knew of draconic told him that it was similarly difficult for Mintaka.
After they finally went over the whole Alphabet and Mintaka had them drawn properly in the sand (he'd had to erase quite a few of them several times to make it perfect) Renathan stood back and admired his had work. "Great job, Mintaka. Can you point to and recite them for me? And do you remember any of the sounds that they stand for?"
[6]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 24, 2021 23:25:55 GMT -6
Mintaka tilts his head in consideration, putting one of his claws beneath his chin to scratch as he thought. Then, he points to one of the symbols. "A, makes the Ay and the Ah sounds. And B... The Buh sound." He seemed to remember the first few semi-well, forgetting that C sometimes had that confusing 'ess' sound to it, and that K also made some of the sounds that C did, but not all of them. Now that he had them in front of him, he had a little bit of an easier time with it than Renathan had been expecting. "Do you remember the M sound?" Renathan asks, after Mintaka stumbled through the 'L' sounds, something that he wasn't really used to at all.
Mintaka tilts his head slightly. "That one... Has the sounds like my name, right? Like the Muh part?" He says, voice a little raspy.
"That's right!" Renathan says, smiling beneath the mask.
[7]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 24, 2021 23:32:32 GMT -6
The rest of the alphabet was much more difficult on Mintaka. It seemed that while he had been completely disusing the Common alphabet, he mostly lost the last few. Renathan and Mintaka worked the rest of them out, but by that point Mintaka was quite worn out. "Don't worry, Mintaka- I'll come back soon, and we'll do this again next time; until you get it. We don't have to do it all at once." Renathan told him. He wasn't too tired out, but Mintaka was the one learning, and they would go at his pace.
Over the next week, and sometimes with Auburn in tow, they would meet up and work on Mintaka's alphabet recognition skills. They wouldn't work on actually reading until he felt ready. After the week, and going over the lowercase symbols as well, Mintaka felt that he was ready to work on the reading comprehension part of the entire endeavor.
[8]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 24, 2021 23:38:11 GMT -6
Renathan sits down with Mintaka on the start of the next week. "Go ahead and write the alphabet for me one more time." Renathan requests of the great Lashak. "Just to make sure that you're in better practice again." He smiles beneath his mask, a tad anxious. Mintaka surprised him with quite a bit of patience displayed in his response. "I'm excited to learn, but we do have all the time in the world."
It was interesting, hearing that from him. Renathan often felt like time ran out faster and faster each day.
Still, the great dragon settles down on the sand and writes in it with a great claw. "Ay, ah." He said, writing the capitols first and then the lowercase second, while reciting the sounds that each could make with the stressed sounds first and the softer sounds after. He did this for each of the common letters in turn.
[9]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 24, 2021 23:42:04 GMT -6
Whenever Mintaka had gotten all twenty-six of the letters (including the lowercase varieties), Renathan nodded to him. "These look great, and you did that quite fast too. Good job." He says, nodding to the lashak. "So, we'll work on reading. Here's one of the books I brought." The russet mammalian brings out an oversized book, still perhaps a little small for the great lashak- but it wasn't too difficult for for Mintaka to squint at. It did also have really large pictures, as well. "Do you think you'll need the magnifying glass?" Renathan asks, a little slyly. He had brought one, removed from a broken telescope.
Mintaka shakes his head, but squints down at the book anyway.
Renathan settles the magnifying glass beneath two of Mintaka's claws anyway. "Here, I won't have you squinting too harshly." At this, he settles down between Mintaka's front legs, putting the book down in front of them.
[10]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 25, 2021 0:12:27 GMT -6
Mintaka may have been stubborn as a youngster, but had long since learned to combat the worst of his urges to be hard-headed. Instead, he peers down over the rust-colored mammalian's shoulder and listened to Renathan, looking at the first word.
"What does it look like? Can you sound out the first word?" Renathan points down at it, beneath the magnifying glass.
Mintaka tilts his head, to better see over his own muzzle. "That's... A double-u. And then an H... And an O." He points out. "Wuh-huh-oh?" He squints. "Wuh-hoo?"
"Close." Renathan offers. "That's Who. Like Hooo. Sometimes W is silent."
That became the general theme of that day, silent letters. Mintaka was quite confused with all of the arbitrary rules for the subject, but they bumbled through reading the really simple book about cartoon ghosts the first day. Mintaka grumbled about the book being for youngsters, and Renathan patted him on the back of one of his foreclaws to comfort him.
"Everyone starts somewhere."
[11]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 25, 2021 0:16:45 GMT -6
Renathan didn't remember himself feeling so funky about the starter books being really childish, but he figured that it would be fairly hard to deal with the struggles of being an older dragon and having to start back where a human child would be. Especially when he had these lessons before. "I'm sorry, but I have a few more books for us to go through today, if you are feeling up to it?" Renathan offers, holding a stack of the oversized but slender books in one hand.
Mintaka breathes out a sigh, but does nod his consent for Renathan to select another book. Renathan picks up one specifically geared from draconic to common this time, not wanting to further insult the great dragon (not that he had meant to in the first place). "You'll like this one, it's got Draconic and Common in it side-by-side, so it might be easier on your eyes."
[12]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 25, 2021 0:23:17 GMT -6
Mintaka rumbles at that one, but he does comply to look down at the book as Renathan opens it. He struggles not to look at the draconic script, and to only look at the common first. He isn't sure if it was really conducive to his learning style to see both side by side at first. He struggles with the common, stumbling over the words. However, does get a couple of the words out himself without looking at the draconic script. He is pleased enough with that to begin using the draconic translation at the bottom to help him guess at some of the harder words; since he has heard all of the words before, it is much easier to make translations verbally than by script.
Slowly, he began to make the connections between the things he had been learning, the alphabet, sounds, and the words he has heard before, all coming together on page.
[13]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 25, 2021 0:29:19 GMT -6
They get through several books in that one day, all of them the short and quick childish ones. A couple of them were like the last, with both common and draconic translations in them. Mintaka was certain that at least some people learned the written languages well before the spoken ones, judging by how the books were laid out. Because he had been taught it spoken first, it was coming much easier to him than it would have been; and of course he was simply re-learning something that he had already learned long ago- but had not used in all that time.
The next few days were spent (some with Auburn alongside them, and some with Renathan using the ritual) on these simpler books, and slowly but surely Mintaka worked and worked until he was able to get through many of the sentences without faltering nearly as badly as he had when he'd first started.
[14]
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Post by Renathan on Nov 25, 2021 0:34:38 GMT -6
It took a lot of additional time and work. Some weeks, Renathan could not come down due to being busy with work. However, Mintaka was very determined to begin to be completely literate in Common, since he had decided that he'd like to do something worthwhile for his community. He wanted to be able to write down stories in both Draconic and Common; to further unite his kind and their soulbonds. The work was honorable, and something he was determined to be able to do.
By the time Renathan returned for the last of their lessons, Mintaka had been practicing and was well beyond the simple books. He was practicing being able to write in the sand using his claw things he had heard, so Renathan would instead dictate a few of the pages from the books and Mintaka would write.
After several months work, Mintaka was pleased enough with his work that he was sure he wouldn't forget it this time.
[15] - [End?]
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