Gravity's Pull

Well, that cheered the other woman up! Jade smiled. Íjvé meant eat. She nodded and began to eat, eager to try each part of the meal. She tried the egg, the meat, the pasta, and the berries in turn. She chewed slowly, savoring her first bite of each, and then began to speed up. She ate small bites, and chewed each thoroughly before she swallowed.

After only a few bites, her stomach kicked in and reminded her how long it had been—noisily. She flushed. "Excuse me." She dropped her gaze back to her plate and ate with a bit more haste, then paused to let the food reach the hungry organ. She gave a smile as big as she could manage. "Good." If it was mistaken for thanks, that was fine until they had a better grasp on each others' language. She took a few slower bites, now that her stomach started digesting the food instead of itself, and then paused as she dripped. With a blush, she scooped it up with a finger, then sucked the drop from the digit before she realized that might be considered rude.

Jade directed a hopefully apologetic glance upward before she continued to eat.

She saved the berries and pasta for last, since she figured there would be a lot of talking, and some moisture would do her good.
 
Despite her foul mood at being handed such an assignment instead of gaining valuable experience in field exercises or being assigned under a more experienced songweaver to know the ins and outs of her profession, Ríváné had to stifle a laugh when she heard Jade's stomach growl. No wonder that she seemed so eager to try the food before her despite the obvious misgivings displayed earlier on her face; she must have been starving to death after having slept for so long! At least Ríváné felt simpathy instead of loathing about that, because she did not hate this woman. In fact, she was surprised that Jade had been keeping it together so well, because she was sure that if she was enjoying the hospitality of humans who did not understand her at all, she would be freaking out.

The word Jade said, though, made the military officer pause. What was 'Good'? It did not sound like a noun from the emphasis in the voice, nor an apology or a thanks as far as she could tell... So it must have been some sort of a qualifier. But not even her sharp ears could give her a hint as to the nature of the word because the differences between the two tongues seemed rather big, making her question her assumptions. So she tried something, namely, she grabbed the utensil she was eating with and pointed at each type of food on her plate before making a circular motion.

"Íj," she said, then she pointed at Jade. "Jade íjvégó íjm." Or in other words, 'Jade ate the food', a message that Ríváné hoped that she would be able to comprehend. Then, she would be able to get a feeling for how Jade emphasized nouns along with verbs, something that would help her greatly in her future endevaours.
 
Jade looked up at the word, then mentally churned through both the phrase and the motions of her companion.

Íj had a similar beginning to Íjvé, which was a commanding-type verb for eating. Íj must be the root, then. Íjvégó and íjm used the same root, so... Was one a noun? One was a noun and one was a verb, had to be. It used subject-verb-direct object or subject-direct object-verb. There wasn't a qualifier at her name, so it wasn't a language where everything could be rearranged at will. That was good. The question now was, did Ríváné mean past tense or present tense.

She frowned a moment, then took a chance. "I eat food-" She paused. "Jade eats food." Third person would be easier than first for this, at least for now. Ríváné could, in theory, figure out which order the parts of speech were, this way. Since Jade wasn't done with her food yet, she didn't use past tense. She kept her red eyes locked on Ríváné and took another bite, as though to illustrate that the verb was a current thing. "Eat. Eats. Is eating."

Hopefully that would help cement that she was dealing with the present tense. Briefly, the idea of a chart came to mind, but there wasn't a timepiece, and... did they even have days like she was accustomed to? It was worth a shot, if they had trouble here.

This was hard. Her mind ached slightly with a learning process she was unaccustomed to, but... it felt good. She was learning. She hadn't had to do this sort of thing ever before, and it made her toes tingle.

She did feel bad for Ríváné though... Jade was starting with English! Poor woman.
 
This was starting to get far more difficult than it needed to be. Not only did Jade repeat several variations of the same thing, Ríváné had no idea which one could be the equivalent of what she said to the other woman and she could only blink with confusion in her eyes, then she tapped her own forehead with a few fingers as a sign of exasperation. This was far harder than learning the language of song through immersion, of that, she was sure, so why the hell did high command think that a songweaver would be appropriate for the task, that she could decode this weird, closed tongue in a matter of days? It would be years before she even learned what the basic words were at this rate!

No, no, this would not do. She had to calm down and start to deconstruct the language in her mind piece by piece. Jade was clearly the woman's name, the thing with 'Eat' at the root obviously meant to consume food, so... 'food' was what was to be consumed? Then at least the sentence order was the same, but Ríváné was not sure what to make exactly of the repetitions that Jade made. Each one of them sounded different, with the same root, so were they perhaps referring to different places in time or was it something unique to the language? Damn the complicated nature of song, because now she was questioning everything that had to do with whatever Jade spoke! Reminding herself that the tongue she had been taught was a very specific case, Ríváné gave something a try.

"Ríváné íjvé íjm," she said as she put a piece of the meat into her mouth and chewed, then she swallowed, then she pointed at the many kinds of food on the table before encircling the whole plate with her fingertip, repeating her gesture from before. "Íj. Íj... Food?" she asked, mimicking the tone that she thought Jade used when Jade was asking her question. "Íjvé... eat?" Again, she hoped that she was making the right connections and she was watching Jade intently to see if she had made some mistake.

Hopefully, Ríváné was on the right path, but this recent exchange had been a little too much for her to handle. Sure, she was equipped to command her own squad, yet a little exercise in learning languages completely stumped her. Then agan, who the hell learned languages these days?
 
Ríváné's confusion and frustration weren't lost on Jade as the red-eyed girl watched, certain the woman felt like giving up. They could barely understand each other, still, but they did make good progress! Or they had been. She sagged slightly as she began to think that this world didn't have anyone-

And then Ríváné began to speak, and Jade looked up and listened. Her eyes brightened. Yes! Perfect!

Now she knew it was subject-verb-object, much like English.

"Jade eats food. Jade íjvé íjm." She agreed, letting the repetition speak of her correctness as she took another bite. Unsure where to go, she thoughtfully looked down at her plate as she took another bite of the pasta.

They had that down, she thought. What came next? She thought about verb conjugation, but decided against it for now. Much as she wanted to ask about things in the past or the future, it would be easier to find a way to ask about names of things.

She paused, then looked toward the other woman, however. Ríváné seemed to be struggling as it was. Could she handle another word?

Jade looked back to her food and poked another berry with the fork, and couldn't help but compare this to the last time she learned a language. Her teacher, the Hunters' smith named Alorsin, had thought it silly that she wanted to learn his dialect of Elven. She insisted, and he taught her as she soaked it up.

At that time, there wasn't a language barrier. In fact, she never had a language barrier in her life. She learned English and German as she was growing up, followed by other languages shortly after, and it never occurred to her that though there were multiple languages, there ever should be a barrier in communication. Even the gestures were different!

She paused, then repeated the sign she saw Ríváné make. "Frustration?" She mimed pulling her own hair and gritting her teeth.

That was a good one to learn as any! She let her expression relax, and let go of her hair to show she was asking, rather than feeling it.
 
For not the first time today, Ríváné felt as if they were headed somewhere other than the bottom of a dark, deep abyss of frustration because her assumptions have been right! Those words were indeed equivalents, though she made a note of how Jade put an extra 's' at the end of the verb she said, because it sounded like that was how her language altered the words when they spoke in first person. Though the songweaver could not be sure, she decided to trust her initial assumptions from now on unless she recieved a strong sign that they were wrong, which would help them move along a lot faster.

Therefore, when Jade told her that strange word, Ríváné thought for a second, then the military officer repeated the tapping of her forehead. "Mánív - Frustration," she repeated, which was likely not completely correct but it seemed to be the emotion that Jade showcased with the grit teeth and the messing up of her hair. Though the gestures were indeed different, there were a few things which remained quite universal because of their primitive origins. Gritting teeth like that was one of them; it was definitely not a proof of enjoyment nor something that was pleasant. So naturally, now that came to mind, Ríváné pointed at her lips and let out a smile.

"Jáv," she said simply, then she relaxed her arm before she decided to pull out an aide now that she got the basic structure of Jade's language down. Even if it was with sentences of only few words, they could proceed to learn the language from now on, similarly as to how song had been taught to her with lots and lots of help from immersion. So she grabbed a small, metallic tube that had been lying under the handle of her tray, then started tracing a line in the air, probably surprising Jade with the glowing, blue line that appeared in the wake of the little tube as if it was a piece of chalk writing in the air.

"Jáv," she repeated as she finished drawing a smile. Apparently, Ríváné had at least a little bit of artistic talent as her lines were crisp and smooth. Then she smiled herself.
"Ríváné jávvé." This was pointed at herself. "Jávrám." This was followed by her putting a piece of her leftovers into her mouths and chewing. "Íjrám." It was important to establish the basics when trying to learn a language, so she was trying to teach how to conjucate verbs properly. She had yet to figure out how to teach Jade second person though...
 
(( Woof. Long delay here! Sorry about that. ))

Jade stared at the lines that appeared mid-air. Even her mother hadn't managed that—though it was for lack of trying, in the woman's defense. She paid keen attention to the smile, then looked again towards Ríváné as she began to speak.

Smile, or happy? Probably happy, given they were speaking of frustration a moment ago. She repeated the word to memorize it, then listened as the other used it in a sentence.

"Ríváné jávvé." Jade repeated slowly, mimicking even the woman's voice as she tried for the correct pronunciation. Then, "Jávrám" came out.

It was being conjugated. Did that mean it was a verb, or was the conjugation a sort of 'being' verb?

Time for a gamble? She thought a moment, then stood and mimed walking. "Walk?" She looked toward Ríváné, watching her. "Jade is walking." She walked in a small circle at her normal pace, then slowed down. "Jade is walking slow." She gave it a few moments, then went faster. "Jade is walking fast."

She kept it up for a few moments before she stopped, sat, and hoped her luck was good today, and then held in a giggle. Luck.
 
((No worries. Sometimes, life catches up on you as I have demonstrated previously.))

Expressions and words seemed to start flowing much more quickly, which pleased Ríváné, though this new addition that Jade put into her words was more than a little confusing. The songweaver could easily understand the walk part, however, the extra word, that little 'is' made her confused. A plus word when the root for 'walk' was being conjucated? That did not make any sense as far as Ríváné was concerned, so she had no idea what the equivalent of that would be in her own language. However, she knew how to chase a lead when she had one, so she attempted to show conjucation to Jade again, standing up.

"Ríváné kírménvé," she said as she walked, then she pointed at herself again to emphasize the first-person part. "Kírménrám. Walk... Kírmén." The two adjectives could come later, she supposed, because she was focused on trying to figure this out. Did Jade's language use more than one kind of conjucation for third person and if so, which idiot was the one responsible for that decision? It just muddled things quite unnecessarily in Ríváné's opinion, but strangely, the fragments she was learning were starting to remind her of something. It was as if she had heard this tongue before, a long time ago, yet she could not quite put her finger on it.

Was it something in language class? History class? She did not know, but it was starting to be very familiar. The closed sounds, the odd way of conjucation and even the bits that she got from the police were reminding her of something, except she had absolutely no idea as to what it could have been.

Regardless of Ríváné's intentions or worries, though, one thing was for certain: walking was a little bit more difficult in this place than on Earth, even if one would not notice it at first. But things definitely weighed more and if Jade demonstrated walking more, she would definitely start to feel the effects of a stronger gravitational pull.
 
Kírménvé was third person. Good to know. Kírménrám must mean first, given how the woman pointed to herself, and then Kírmén was the base. "Jade Kírménvé. Jade is walking." She pointed to herself. "Walk. Kírménrám."

This was good headway! It was a little awkward, though.

She returned to the bed and sat, her legs tingling with the effort of walking so much. A few more moments of thought.

Pronouns.

She pointed to herself. "I." Then to Ríváné. "You."
 
By now, the face of Ríváné started to wear a genuine smile because of the rapid advancement despite the feeling of very vague familiarity she was getting from the language that Jade was using. It kept bothering her, eating away at her conscience, but nevertheless, she was glad that they had at least gotten to personal pronouns, which would make life a lot easier! Soon, they would have the basics of language down, even if it was some weird sort of tongue that used an extra word to conjucate at least certain verbs. At least it was not as confounding for humans as song was, for which the songweaver was ever so grateful.

"Rá... I," she said as she pointed at herself after having exiled the thoughts of her second tongue from her mind. "Vá... you." Pointing at Jade of course before she made a point of standing up and sitting down again. "Jade nűdvé. Ríváné nűdvé." Then she pointed at the other woman, her face bearing a happy smile now that her problems with second-person had been solved. "Nűdáj." Again, she pointed at herself in order to highlight the nature of her language's conjucation. "Nűdrám."

Hopefully, that would be enough to convey Ríváné's message and if it was not, she still had her metallic tube.
 
Jade rose, then sat "Rá nűdáj?" She tried, watching Ríváné. If people ate eats, did that mean that they sat on sits? She held back a giggle, then pointed to the bed. "Bed. Rá nűdáj... bed?" Bed would be important. So would sleep.

"Sleep." She mimed sleeping. "I sleep. You sleep. Jade sleeps. Ríváné sleeps." She almost forgot to conjugate it.

Oh, she wished it wasn't too late to switch to German!

She could only push on. "Jade sleeps on the bed." She slowly sat back up, then watched Ríváné, red eyes locked as she leaned forward attentively.
 
No, that was not how it worked at all! Why did the woman add the personal pronoun to her sentence and why was she using second person? That did not make any sense! Ríváné thought that by now, Jade would have figured out that conjucation was basically the same for every word, but apparently, the red-eyed woman spoke such a different language that it was not self-evident. So instead of repeating the words spoken to her, she shook her head in denial while she hoped that the gesture would be the same between them, then she started again.

"Ríváné nűdvé. Jade nűdvé." Then she pointed at herself to emphasize the first-person aspect of what she was about to saj. "Nűdrám. Íjrám. Kírménrám." This was followed by a little pause so that the words could sink in before Ríváné continued. "Rá," then she shook her head in a rather lively manner before holding two of her fingers out horizontally, then crossing them in a gesture meant to emphasize that it was not necessary at all. The conjucation already contained the person speaking and if she was strict, then she was being specific by mentioning her and Jade's name in third person, so it was not necessary.

And for the moment, Ríváné did not bother repeating the words said to her as she first wanted for Jade to get a basic handle on the language being spoken.
 
Jade frowned. She did something wrong?

She paid close attention as Ríváné tried to explain, then slowly nodded and repeated the three conjugated verbs. So, they didn't use pronouns, so much as they simply conjugated? What happened in third person when the speaker was talking about a man and a woman? She banished the thought for now, then clumsily mimicked the tap to the head that seemed to mean frustration as she churned through the corrrections.

"Nűdrám." She repeated. That meant -rám was first person, -áj was second, and -vé was third. She waited, watching and listening.
 
A bright smile was Jade's answer, indicating that the red-eyed woman had been correct when she said 'nűdrám' and now hopefully, she had figured out how to conjucate verbs properly! That also meant that if Ríváné taught her most of the nouns, then she would know how to speak basic sentences save for a few irregular occurences that did not follow the scheme for one reason or another, but those could come later. For now, they would have to learn the nouns, something that would no doubt take a very, very long time for both of them. Going over a language verbally and without a dictionary was just as much a pain in the ass as Ríváné remembered it to be when she was learning song, but at least this was fairly straightforward. Or at least she thought so.

"Ván," said Ríváne as she pointed at the bed. "Vánrám, vánáj, vánvé." Or in other words: Bed, I sleep, You sleep, they sleep. It seemed that the langauge this reality spoke was quite strange. At least to a foreigner.
 
Jade sighed, glad she got it right, then nodded as Ríváne gave her the vocabulary for bed and sleep. Well... A sleep verb and a sleep noun that likely covered most sleeping surfaces.

Did they sit on a sit, though? She pointed to the other woman, then to the chair. "Nűdáj... nűd?" If she could learn the verbs or the nouns, they seemed to follow a fairly simple rule, but she needed confirmation first.

Also a toilet, but she could hold it for now...
 
That is how the way things worked indeed! Ríváné was wearing a bright smile as Jade pointed to the chair and drew a correct conclusion, so to emphasize the correctness of the gesture, she patted the chair with her hands.
"Nűd!" she said, obviously happy that her unlikely guest got the gist of conjucation as well as the verb-noun relationship in the songweaver's native tongue. Now it was only a matter of trading nouns with her until they became able to talk to each other relatively comfortably, so in order to make that happen, she used the metallic tube in her hand to tap away at the empty air, which made a holographic list appear in front of the woman. It was a list of the most commonly used nouns in her language, one that High Command had compiled for her for ease of teaching.

So Ríváné crossed out a few words from the list, then she looked at the rest... Then concluded that this would take a very, very long time. It would be likely days, if not weeks before they were able to communicate on a decent level, so she figured she should try to be more efficient about it. But how? She had no idea at all about the language that Jade spoke even if it did seem rather familiar. But without any way to be sure, she was stuck for the moment.
 
Jade grinned. Yes! She was right. That made things easier on her, but... not on Ríváné. In English, people did not sit on sits. They sat on chairs. "Nűd. Chair." She said, to offer Ríváné the same vocabulary.

Then again, it would just be easier if Jade learned the native tongue, rather than trying to teach. A lot easier, and she could speak with her family in private...

Speaking of, would she even be able to at this point? She felt more awake, but she'd slipped up and made a stupid mistake once already learning—one that simply paying attention would have helped with. Absently, she wondered just how the writing-in-air thing worked. A laser array seemed unlikely. Was it magic? It seemed likely. If not, then this world was far, far more advanced than her own.

Thank goodness for distractions from body functions. She wanted to learn more than she wanted to deal with... learning a new toilet.
 
For her part, the songweaver was busy trying to figure out how to make this process smoother and quicker, so she only nodded absent-mindedly as she surveyed the very long list of words before her. There had to be some easier way to teach or to learn the language, but what was she going to do with a list of words that Jade could not even read! If she spoke such a strange tongue, there was no telling what sort of characters or words she knew or how her people wrote, but as Ríváné thought about it, she realised that there were far more opportunities in writing than she had thought. For starters, the language she was teaching to Jade was phonetic, so a letter represented a sound, therefore, if she taught the sounds to Jade, the red-eyed woman would be able to read and learn!

Yes, that was going to be the way! Suddenly re-energised, Ríváné changed the display in front of her into a long string of letters that she pulled apart to leave one row out for Jade to write down her own set of characters when the songweaver was done with the lesson. She also made sure to leave a little space between each letter so she would be able to point at them.
"Ah," said Ríváné, then she highlighted the letter corresponding to the sound she made. "Áh." Again. And for all letters of her language's alphabet, she pronounced the sounds before she arranged a few letters to represent her own name.
"R-I-V-Á-N-É," she spelled, pointing out each letter in succession, then after a little bit of thought, she arranged another bunch of letters. "D-T-S-É-D. Jade!" Obviously, her spelling of Jade's name was just an approximation of how she thought Jade's name would be written in Ríváné's tongue.

But nevertheless, Ríváné was quite ready to repeat the alphabet for Jade's benefit until the other woman learned how to read it.
 
Jade blinked, then leaned in to get a better view of the letters. To test herself, she spelled out several words by pointing to each letter in turn. She carefully pronounced each letter, glancing up toward Ríváné to see if she was correct. Nűd. Íj...

She paused at that one. There was a letter for J. Did she simply not notice the difference? It was possible.

She started to reach toward her jacket, then paused as she remembered the empty space Ríváné left. In the empty space, she used a finger to copy one of the letters from Ríváné's name as she made the sound, to see if it was right.

Would the letter be visible using her finger? Honestly, floating letters and being able to write in the air left her a little wary. A pen and paper would be better, she thought. Easier to look back at.
 
Last edited:
This was going much better than expected! It seemed that Jade had caught on to the phonetic nature of Ríváné's language rather quickly and the songweaver only had to correct her a few times by highlighting the correct letters, then making the sound again for Jade. Something that amazed her though was how easily Jade had been able to pick up on the sounds that she used, almost as if the red-eyed woman was a trained songweaver herself, even if she did not seem to speak the language of song. But Ríváné was just thankful for a relatively easy job, so she watched with interest as Jade attempted to draw between the letters.

Oh. Yeah. That had been really stupid. Tapping her forehead in frustration at her own stupidity, Ríváné offered Jade a small smile and showed her the little metal tube that the songweaver had been using, making sure to showcase the button that could be used for writing in the air. Then she handed the little device to Jade.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back