[Open]

[prettyinhandcuffs]

[Duo can be found wandering around the Spirit Wilds with a pencil and a newspaper in hand, scribbling bits of English onto the paper and occasionally going up to people to ask to get a bit of the text read to him.]

Hey, can you make out what that says?

[Man, he was glad the locals spoke English, even if they didn't write it. Couldn't be too hard to pick up the rest though, right?]

Comments

[lavamylife]

[Bolin waits for him to draw out the few Mandarin characters on the sheet of paper before taking a look over them. Well, that certainly looked a lot better. Some of it actually seemed to make sense. Actually, it all made sense... except for one little mistake that Bolin takes out a pen to correct—a single mark that either had been forgotten or just wasn't quite right.]

Actually, this all makes perfect sense to me, except for this... but now it makes sense. This one's "Hello," and this one is "apple," yeah?

[prettyinhandcuffs]

Not exactly... It's the words for republic and city. Name of this town, right? Not exactly my first language though, so my buddy Wufei would probably find something to correct me on.

[lavamylife]

Well close enough, I suppose. [Sure, the words were similar... in that a rat elephant was similar to an owl cat.] But the characters look similar enough to things I recognize.

[prettyinhandcuffs]

Well, we've got languages like that at home too. This stuff- [He pointed to the Roman lettering.] -is used over a good portion of my world, but all arranged differently for different languages. The characters stand for sounds instead of words. Like here, this is how my name's written.

[He scribbled down the string of nine letters, a gap after the first three.]

See?

[lavamylife]

I do see, [Bolin says after waiting for Duo to finish writing his name. Then for a moment, Bolin looks back and forth between Duo and the sheet of paper he's holding.] I imagine that makes it a little bit difficult for you to read things here, doesn't it?

[prettyinhandcuffs]

Yep! That's why I'm asking folk to translate bits.

[Silly Bolin. Duo gave him a grin, twirling the pencil in his fingers.]

Once I get enough vocabulary under my belt, I figure I can start working on context and all that.

[lavamylife]

I guess that makes sense. I... imagine they've got to have someone here that teaches the language to people. I mean, not everyone is literate in the city, but there are quite a few, so... you might have luck with that too?

[prettyinhandcuffs]

There's a thought. Hope they'd take a foreigner like me. They ran reading programs from churches and such where I'm from.

[lavamylife]

[Bolin isn't exactly certain what a church is, but that's neither here nor there.]

Oh I'm sure they would. I mean, I guess a few people would probably be learning even as they got older, so you probably wouldn't be too out of place?