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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 18:58:25 GMT -6
Perhaps he shouldn't have doubted. He sensed, as well as saw, the confusion setting in for Rhys, who inclined his head this way and then the other, before glowering almost comically with the apparent effort of trying to decipher Noa's words. If this were anyone else, he might have accused them of exaggerating, but no -- Rhys really did carry on in that cartoonishly obvious fashion sometimes. And Noa had expected it to be disorienting for him.
After several moments had passed in silence, Noa felt the familiar voice in his mind again: {Okay, okay, I give up. What did you say?}
"I asked what you wanted me to say," Noa said. He did his best to keep his voice bland, but a trace of amusement snuck in -- though given their bond, he probably wouldn't have been able to hide that from Rhys no matter how even he kept his voice anyway.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 19:01:47 GMT -6
He expected an indignant response from the Faeron now, or at least a dejected one, but instead Rhys said, {Can you say it again? Slower this time.}
Noa wasn't in the habit of taking orders from Rhys, but in this case he was trying to learn something, and Noa was -- if halfheartedly -- trying to teach it to him. So he did as Rhys requested, and repeated the words, drawing them out.
{Oh, you did make those sounds before, didn't you?} Rhys said.
Noa sighed. "You're not going to pick it up memorizing a sentence at a time. Hold on." He gave his place on the rock wall a few more taps, and a cascade of loose stone fell away, revealing... well, nothing promising just yet. Sighing, Noa turned to face Rhys. "I'll give you this hand signal when I want you to stop listening in with your mind, and this one for when you can again."
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 19:04:47 GMT -6
It was still a trust and honor system, but he was trusting that Rhys wanted this enough to put in the work. And if he didn't, then so be it; Noa didn't need him to be able to understand spoken Common, let alone to read. It might offer a little convenience here and there for Noa, but the one who stood to benefit the most was still Rhys himself, by a long shot.
Rhys agreed readily, so Noa gave him the signal to stop listening in telepathically. Then he pointed to Rhys. "Rhys," he said. Surely the Faeron recognized his own name. He might never have used it as such, but he must have heard it so many times that if any word was likely to ring a bell, it had to be this one.
And sure enough, recognition did dawn on Rhys's features. Noa nodded, then pointed to himself. "Noa."
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 19:10:27 GMT -6
That one, too, seemed to sound familiar to Rhys. Having established these two most familiar of words, Noa moved on to words that Rhys had almost certainly never paid attention to in his life.
"Pick," he said, hefting the tool in his hand. He then picked up a rock. "Rock." Finally, he took the torch from where it hung on the wall. "Torch." Three objects, chosen more for their ready availability than their usefulness as learned words, but in this case Noa just wanted to get Rhys used to listening for and differentiating between the sounds at all. It wasn't how you would teach language to a child, or even a speaking creature, really, but Rhys's case provided some unique challenges.
Making sure that Rhys was still paying attention, Noa went through the objects again, pointing at each and saying its name, once at normal pace and once more slowly.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 19:13:43 GMT -6
After he was done, he let his hands fall to his sides, stared at Rhys, and said, "Torch."
It took Rhys a moment to figure out what Noa wanted him to do. Rhys probably wasn't used to that either -- having to anticipate it to that degree, when he usually just... read Noa's mind. But in this case it wasn't a difficult conclusion to come to, at least not for a creature of his intelligence. Now it was Rhys's turn to point, which he did with his tail. Noa nodded, which was a gesture that Rhys probably recognized; and as he nodded, he said, "Yes." Slipping in simple associations where he could, in between the caveman-esque pointing and grunting out words.
"Pick," Noa said next, and Rhys indicated the pick. They went like this for several rounds, with Noa switching up the order of the items he called, sometimes calling the same thing three times in a row.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 20:30:27 GMT -6
Rhys didn't have too much trouble with it, except on occasion where his attention lapsed; sometimes Noa had to repeat himself when Rhys didn't quite catch what he said. It was annoying, but not surprising, and Noa figured it would happen less as time went on. After all, Rhys didn't have an issue with his hearing.
But three objects wasn't really a challenge. Once Rhys seemed comfortable with the objects that Noa had taught to him, Noa dug out the contents of his entire cart of equipment, and the cart too. Again, he introduced each as a word out loud to Rhys. But where three items had been easy, a dozen or so -- with the original three mixed in to boot -- was harder for Rhys to remember. It took longer before he was consistently pointing to the correct objects when Noa called them, especially if they had similar sounding names.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 20:33:12 GMT -6
He got there eventually, but by that point Noa's little break had gone on for so long that he genuinely despaired of getting any real mining done. He gave Rhys the signal to tune back in, and again, the relief was palpable.
{That's tough! And there's words for everything?} Rhys said.
"Oh, just wait until you get to particles and tenses and the like," Noa said. "Though you have it a little easier in that you only have to be able to understand what other people are saying. If you had to speak too, you'd have to remember it well enough to construct your own sentences, instead of just recognizing words when you hear them." It had been that way for Noa when he was learning other languages, and indeed there were ones where he simply needed to know what he was reading -- like runes. Those were always easier to learn.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 20:36:37 GMT -6
{This is going to take a long time, isn't it?} Rhys said glumly.
Noa, who had returned to his digging, shrugged one shoulder. "It depends on how hard you work at it. Though it's a lot harder at the beginning than it is later on. Once you have a large enough vocabulary, you can sometimes figure out what a word means from just context, and it's a lot less frustrating once you can understand most of what you're hearing." And in Noa's experience, creatures, or at least those created by the labs, had a certain aptitude for learning in general, so Noa wouldn't be surprised if Rhys picked it up faster than a human might have. But a human could take years to become fluent in a language, so it might well take Rhys a long time too.
For the rest of the trip, they alternated between Noa mining and teaching Rhys some words.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 20:41:31 GMT -6
True to Noa's expectations, it made him slower and less efficient at both, especially since Rhys didn't understand enough Common that Noa could just talk to him while digging. But Noa did find a couple of gems, which he pocketed, and by the end of it Rhys had memorized a smattering of nouns, which was... something like progress, anyway.
And it did give them something to do to break up the monotony of these mining trips. On the way home, Noa pointed out other things and named them, though depending on how common an object was, he couldn't necessarily test Rhys on recall for all of it. What the Faeron could absorb, he would; and what he couldn't, they would come back to once he was better established with the language.
They did work on his understanding outside of the mines too -- making use of, among other things, a few picture books from Noa's childhood that he had almost entirely forgotten.
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Post by Noa on Aug 2, 2023 20:45:03 GMT -6
But a lot of their work did happen on these mining trips, helping to break up some of the monotony of digging. There wasn't much else to do but talk and dig down here, and Noa rarely came here with any of his other companions in tow anymore anyway.
Over time, and with some practice, they had fallen into a different kind of system than the one that Noa had established on their first lesson. Instead of cutting Rhys off from communicating with Noa via telepathy full stop, Rhys simply stopped reading Noa's mind. He could still broadcast his own thoughts, so long as he had the self control not to start reading thoughts while he did it. It was an adjustment for Rhys, and in the beginning he struggled somewhat with it, perhaps not unlike someone being asked to only use one arm instead of both. But seeing as Rhys didn't have the ability to speak back, it was a necessary adaptation.
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Post by Nadia on Aug 3, 2023 4:13:37 GMT -6
Check thoroughly for these.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2023 20:13:48 GMT -6
Otherwise, there would be no way for him to ask clarifying questions, and testing for his listening comprehension would have been... not impossible, but much more inconvenient, especially for words that were more difficult to convey through gesture and pantomime.
In this manner, they carried on in a similar manner to their usual, with Noa speaking aloud in Common, and Rhys speaking back through his telepathy. But now, when they were practicing Rhys's Common, Rhys would listen with his ears, and try to decipher the meanings that way.
Over the course of several trips, along with some supplementary lessons at home between trips, Rhys had learned just enough words to understand some very basic sentences. Or maybe it was more of a mix of guessing and understanding. When Noa had the mana to do it, he would also cast a spell so Rhys could help him locate gems, though their mining trips remained less productive than they could be.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2023 20:18:20 GMT -6
On this particular trip, Noa loosed the spell after they had arrived at the cavern, then said, "Find me a blue gem." Rhys was already in 'Common mode', as he'd dubbed it, so it took longer than usual before Noa received a response.
{You want a blue gem, right?}
"Yes. Do you know 'find'?" Noa said. Rhys was already familiar with basic question starters and the word 'know', since the former were a specific lesson Noa went over with him, while the latter was a word he'd encountered countless times because Noa had to ask him what he could and couldn't understand. So at least this time, he could be sure that Rhys understood the full sentence.
Again, there was a pause. {Look for?} Rhys said, but he wasn't certain. Noa couldn't remember if he had taught Rhys that specific word before, so if he figured it out through context, then good for him.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2023 20:22:04 GMT -6
"Yes," Noa said again. Right now he was trying to use the same word consistently -- 'yes' instead of 'yeah' or 'that's right' or 'mhm', all of which he would have used in his regular speech if he weren't having to avoid confusing Rhys. They would get there eventually, but now wasn't the time to be getting fancy with it.
{Look for a blue gem... Wait, I can't do that! That's not how that works!} Rhys had been focusing so hard on deciphering the sentence itself that he hadn't, apparently, paid any attention to its meaning until now. Noa laughed, while Rhys complained that Noa was making fun of him.
Eventually, Noa shrugged. "Find me a rock, then."
{Oh, that's easy. Here.} Rhys levitated a rock right into Noa's waiting hand. {But you didn't really want that, did you? You just said that because that's one of the words I know.}
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2023 20:25:09 GMT -6
"Am I that nice?" Noa said, inclining his head.
{No,} Rhys said, {I guess you're not. So did you really want a rock?}
If Rhys had still been reading Noa's mind, Noa might have commented on how Rhys didn't seem to think about that one for very long... but if Noa said something like that now, there was no way Rhys would understand. And it wasn't exactly a teaching moment, so he let it go. Rhys was right; he wasn't nice. But he wasn't interested in being nice either.
"No," Noa said. "I don't. Find me a gem. Any gem."
{What's 'any'?} Rhys said, though from the way his tendrils were waving, he was getting to work. It was funny, the way he asked about words he didn't know -- Noa hadn't really thought about it until they'd started doing this either, but when Rhys spoke to him, it was also in direct meanings most of the time.
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