How We Met - July, 1992 - Private RP Part 2

Last edited by Sephiroth on Thu Oct 11, 2012 10:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

Sitting up and smirking a little at being called a showoff, Sephiroth was glad he wasn't back at the Tower. The other Thirds were insufferable when the power went out, the higher ranking ones used it as an excuse to try to scare the $#!^ out of the juniors. And the newer ones tended to decide it was the perfect time to tell 'scary' stories until the power was restored. It was hard to sleep with intermittent screaming...

Seeing as he was the primary source of light at the moment, Sephiroth got off the bed and stood up himself, rather than let Tseng try to get to the closet in the dark. No matter that it might've been amusing to hear an elite Assassin stumble around in the dark.

Thankful for his personal walking glow stick, Tseng managed to find the candles which were buried deep in the supply closet. "Why don't we go sit at the kitchen table and we can start working on teaching you Wutain." He motioned gently for Sephiroth to head to the table while he headed for his office. He had to help teach a few of the Turks Wutain when he first arrived and so he had a few home made books he had done up for them to learn and knew it would be perfect for Sephiroth.

Well... it would be interesting learning by candle-light, he supposed. He did sometimes read during outages, though he had to keep the book practically right in front of his nose because he didn't have a candle or a flashlight and didn't want to accidentally set anything on fire while he was reading. He'd singed his desk that way one time. keeping an ear on where Tseng was, he moved over to the table.

It only took him a few moments to find the books he was looking for, though it seemed like Rod had taken a few liberties with one of them. “Remind me to kick his ass later.” He growled out moving back to the kitchen table, setting the few candles that he had down, giving him enough light to see clearly. No doubt with the amount of light Sephiroth could probably see as clear as day. “Here I made these for some of the Turks when I got drafted into playing language teacher, It’s got the basic Alphabet which is what we mainly use.”

In wake of the amount of light, Sephiroth's pupils had shrunk, reverting to something only a little wider than normal. Basic? Did that mean they had more than one? He tilted his head slightly, curiosity roused by the idea of a language that not only used a different lettering system, but had a greater number of characters that were used.

Opening the book up he went through explaining all the different symbols and how they sounded. He would work on the teen memorizing them and learning how to actually draw them. This batch wasn’t difficult and would cover most of the native words that he would be learning, it wouldn’t be until they got into the foreign words that the alphabet got ten times more confusing.

It was a little difficult wrapping his mind around how each character wasn't so much a letter as it was a syllable. Though, Sephiroth probably should've realized that when he'd noticed his own name was written with five characters, rather than nine. Though... even that didn't make sense, as his name was only three syllables... He'd figure it out eventually.

“Midgarian names are difficult because we don’t have some of the letters you do, that is why your name looks so different.” He wrote out Sephiroth’s name and allowed him to actually see what the characters actually were. “It sounds almost the same, but it looks completely wrong if it’s spelt out in the Midgarian alphabet.”

Sephiroth tilted his head as he considered them, tracing each line and curve. Compared to some of the others, the characters were actually rather simple. No loops or extra marks, just angles and gentle slopes, only one actually crossed over itself and it seemed a little odd now that a plain square was actually a character. It took him a moment, but he realized the center character was actually smaller than the others, which seemed somehow very important.

“You have to be careful of the smaller characters, if you write them full sized you will end up saying something completely different. The smaller characters are said in combination with the bigger character in front.” He spelt out two words that looked identical except one had a smaller character instead of the larger one, he then wrote down what each word meant and it was a big difference. “One character can change the whole word.. there are also words that are spelt the same, but it’s the inflection when you say them is what dictates what word it is”

Heteronym, the term came to mind after a moment. Spelled the same, but with different pronunciations and meanings. In a way... it seemed like it was both just as complicated... and more so than Midgarian. Smaller characters were like accent marks that dictated a letter be pronounced in a certain way, just more elaborate in appearance and larger. Sephiroth nodded slightly, filing the information away.

“That is just our simpler Alphabet, we have three total..” He took the paper back that had the two identical words on it and wrote them out in the two other Alphabets and handed it back to Sephiroth. “Your name is actually written in the second alphabet which is used more for foreign words. This one.. the third one.” He pointed to the single more complicated symbol. “Is our largest and hardest to learn, you can say an entire word in one character instead of six or seven in the other alphabets. My name is actually written in this form, so it’s only one character.”

Hell.... Three alphabets. Sephiroth almost cringed as he took in the complex shapes. Maybe they only took a single character, but they looked to him as if they took as many strokes as writing the word out in the other two alphabets. This wasn't learning a language, this was more like learning multiple dialects of a language.

Tseng chuckled seeing the look on Sephiroth’s face, it was pretty much the same look everyone else had when they realized exactly how hard Wutain was to learn. “It takes even us many years to master our own language, most children do not learn the most complex alphabet until they are at least your age.”

That only made him feel like he should have started learning it well before now. Hojo simply hadn't ever thought it necessary for whatever reason that he learn any form of Wutain. Instead, he'd been taught the various continental dialects with his only knowledge of Wutai coming from encyclopedias or obscure references in his textbooks to a person or place or event.

Tseng smiled looking through one of the books. “Don’t worry Seph, you will pick up on it fast. As I learned first hand, if you want to learn a language fast you immerse yourself in it. When you reach a point that you have a greater understanding of speaking it, that will be the only way I will speak to you.” He had taken the crash course in Midgarian listening to the diplomats that visited their country and the temple and an even bigger crash course when he entered the SOLDIER program. He still found himself floundering for words as he was still learning, and his spelling.. don’t even get him started on that. All his reports have to be proof read prior for spelling and grammar mistakes.

Sephiroth had the feeling he'd either be very fascinated, or very frustrated, by Tseng refusing the speak in Midgarian. Maybe both. He'd have to find out if Tseng knew any of the other continental dialects, just in case he wanted to get a little revenge for his frustration. Even if Tseng didn't want to tell him, Veld likely knew the answer. It could rather fun, actually... he could speak every sentence in a different dialect just to further confuse him.

“What are you thinking about?” Tseng leaned across the table eyes watching him smirking. “You have that look on your face like you are plotting something naughty.” The emotions on Sephiroth’s face were subtle but he had quickly learned what most of them meant.

The look Sephiroth shot him was at the same time innocent and impish. He wasI about to tell before he could implement it, he certainly couldn't let his brother prepare for it. As he thought on it more, he realized that he might be able to get some of the other Turks to join in. He'd just have to figure out who knew what - as well as what Tseng knew.

Tseng sat back, single brow arched. “Sephiroth, you can not pull off innocent..you try and you just look more evil.” Now he was really onto the boy, he would figure out what he had planned.. he wasn’t a Turk for nothing after all.

Sephiroth chuckled, smiling. He supposed he couldn't, at least not at the same time as plotting something so amusing. He could pull it just fine on other occasions when the subject was less amusing. He tried to blank his expression, but his amusement only crept back and overpowered it.

“I have no idea what is going on in that mind of yours, but I hope you know what you are doing.” He smirked leaning his chin on his hand, “cause I would hate to see you try something against me and get your ass utterly handed to you.”

He just continued smiling. He had a while to beat out the details, and it was fairly innocent as pranks went. Tseng might even manage to learn something from it - if only to try to keep Sephiroth from pulling something like it again. How complicated he let it get would depend on how frustrated he got with learning Wutain.

Rolling his eyes Tseng pulled a piece of paper to him curious if he actually remembered something correctly. “ Revail vyrn dan minuial ú galad, ú vin anor hen. Cano an dregad ú natha ored. Gwanwen ost in giliath Dannen Osgiliath.” He spoke it out as he wrote it down tilting his head as he looked at it. “I think that’s right.”

Frowning, Sephiroth tilted his own head, some of the words sounded similar to one of the Nordic dialects, but it wasn't a Continental language at all. Considering Hojo had wanted him to learn every modern dialect that wasn't Wutain - and this certainly wasn't Wutain - he should've known it... unless it wasn't a dialect that was in use.

» How We Met - July, 1992 - Private RP Part 2
» How We Met - July, 1992 - Private RP Part 2
» How We Met - Late June, 1992 - Private RP
» Sword of Legends - August 1992 - Private RP
» [Private] Pre-Revo RP - Spring, 1993