[Her smile falters for a moment when the obvious follow of "everything is really different" comes to her mind... but she manages to stop it from becoming words on her tongue, swallowing it back down in favor of preventing her fingers from wringing by hooking her thumbs in the tool belt holding her pelt wrap closed about her "waist". Actually no, wait, she needs one of those hands to tap a knuckle against her lips, brow furrowing as she thinks.]
Useful words...
[It remains a truth that three months in... Konoha doesn't want to give up on the futile hope that this is all just a dream. That she will soon wake up on her own futon, in her own home, and everything will make sense again. Barring that, that... that Patho-Gen will realize they have made a mistake and send them all back. Or at least the ones who will be useless in a fight... She doesn't want to think about being here long enough to need to know how to communicate with others, with these people...
But. Liem is being kind. And it's a nice offer, even if she laments everything else about the situation. So she actually thinks about it... and then points at herself a bit haplessly.]
[Poor Konoha. The life she left behind was so clearly different from this one in every possible way. Even though Liem wants to return home more than anything, at least he’s used to being an unwelcome stranger in a big city. He doesn’t have a quiet little village and a loving family waiting for him.]
It certainly couldn’t hurt. Here, I’ll show you.
[Pulling out his syntrofos, he steps closer, turning so she can see his screen as he pulls up their conversation. The bewildering emojis remain right where he’d left them.]
This is the character for “I.” [He indicates it on the keyboard, pressing it and then composing a simple emoji message, which he then sends to her device:] I 🩷 🍚
If you wanted to write “I’m” instead, it would look like this: I’m 🌳🍃
[Oh... There they are... her puzzle pictures. Were they weird? She hopes not. She knows how to send the voice messages, where you "record" your voice and send snippets of it to other people... and she knows how to press the button to accept a "call", but... what if she was somewhere where it was too scary to speak, or being overheard would be bad... ?
Nibbling on her lip, she leans closer, committed to trying to memorize what Liem shows her. It's bound to be complicated.
Except it's just... one tap?]
Eh- ?
[She digs her own device out of her tool belt and stares at it, then puts it together with Liem's as if to compare them, trying to find some sort of difference in the keys. Four down, five left... the one with the little line on it???]
It's just one character? That's "I"?
[Someone is used to kanji that have... lots of strokes...]
[Even despite his fatigue, Liem finds a smile lifting the corner of his mouth at Konoha’s clear bewilderment. He’s not familiar enough with her language to know how complicated the characters can get, but clearly, even for a short word like this one, she was expecting something more involved.]
That’s right. Simple, yes? “We” is very short, too. Here, you might like to know that one…
[Again, he taps it out on the keyboard: two letters, this time. He could probably go through every pronoun that came to mind and not encounter anything she’d find especially complicated, but he assumes the more words he throws at her all at once, the more difficult it will be for her to memorize which spelling is which.]
I didn’t mean that you need to come up with all the words you’d like to know right know, anyway. I’m sure it’d be simpler to single out useful ones as they come up, and ask me then. I don’t mind.
[He supposes that he might not reply right away if he’s busy, but in this land, he’s rarely so busy that he can’t take 30 seconds to explain the meaning of a written word, or the spelling of a spoken one.]
["I" is eight different strokes in Japanese, Liem... and okay, Konoha doesn't know that, but. The point is, she was definitely expecting such an important word to be more complicated than what looked to her now like one press of a button. Wild. Still, even though she does look at "we", it's smart to think... too much at once was probably not a good idea. She smiles, grateful.]
Thanks, Mister Liem... I'll ask if I need up needing one.
[She didn't want to bother him too much, but if it was important...]
Besides, I didn't mean to make you play teacher today... we're going to cook together, right?
[It was "cook", right? (No, Konoha, it was probably "go eat".)]
[Based on the surprised lift of his eyebrows when Konoha asks if they’re going to cook together, this is not exactly what Liem had intended upon agreeing to meet here. True, they did exchange some cooking-related emojis, but he thinks some miscommunications may have happened along the way.]
Oh… That does sound nice, but I’m not sure where we could do something like that. I doubt the hotel staff would let us use their kitchen.
[Considering they’re kept busy all day preparing the free food available for the hotel residents, he’s betting the Valentia’s kitchen is a pretty busy place. Cooking there might be a bit hectic for their tastes even if they were allowed.]
I thought maybe you wanted to eat together. I suppose I didn’t catch your meaning quite as adroitly as I’d hoped.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FatherTalbott
PROFILE
no subject
[Her smile falters for a moment when the obvious follow of "everything is really different" comes to her mind... but she manages to stop it from becoming words on her tongue, swallowing it back down in favor of preventing her fingers from wringing by hooking her thumbs in the tool belt holding her pelt wrap closed about her "waist". Actually no, wait, she needs one of those hands to tap a knuckle against her lips, brow furrowing as she thinks.]
Useful words...
[It remains a truth that three months in... Konoha doesn't want to give up on the futile hope that this is all just a dream. That she will soon wake up on her own futon, in her own home, and everything will make sense again. Barring that, that... that Patho-Gen will realize they have made a mistake and send them all back. Or at least the ones who will be useless in a fight... She doesn't want to think about being here long enough to need to know how to communicate with others, with these people...
But. Liem is being kind. And it's a nice offer, even if she laments everything else about the situation. So she actually thinks about it... and then points at herself a bit haplessly.]
Would "I" be good to know... ?
[If she could say "I 🌳🍃" or "I 👩🐎"...]
no subject
It certainly couldn’t hurt. Here, I’ll show you.
[Pulling out his syntrofos, he steps closer, turning so she can see his screen as he pulls up their conversation. The bewildering emojis remain right where he’d left them.]
This is the character for “I.” [He indicates it on the keyboard, pressing it and then composing a simple emoji message, which he then sends to her device:] I 🩷 🍚
If you wanted to write “I’m” instead, it would look like this: I’m 🌳🍃
no subject
Nibbling on her lip, she leans closer, committed to trying to memorize what Liem shows her. It's bound to be complicated.
Except it's just... one tap?]
Eh- ?
[She digs her own device out of her tool belt and stares at it, then puts it together with Liem's as if to compare them, trying to find some sort of difference in the keys. Four down, five left... the one with the little line on it???]
It's just one character? That's "I"?
[Someone is used to kanji that have... lots of strokes...]
no subject
That’s right. Simple, yes? “We” is very short, too. Here, you might like to know that one…
[Again, he taps it out on the keyboard: two letters, this time. He could probably go through every pronoun that came to mind and not encounter anything she’d find especially complicated, but he assumes the more words he throws at her all at once, the more difficult it will be for her to memorize which spelling is which.]
I didn’t mean that you need to come up with all the words you’d like to know right know, anyway. I’m sure it’d be simpler to single out useful ones as they come up, and ask me then. I don’t mind.
[He supposes that he might not reply right away if he’s busy, but in this land, he’s rarely so busy that he can’t take 30 seconds to explain the meaning of a written word, or the spelling of a spoken one.]
no subject
Thanks, Mister Liem... I'll ask if I need up needing one.
[She didn't want to bother him too much, but if it was important...]
Besides, I didn't mean to make you play teacher today... we're going to cook together, right?
[It was "cook", right? (No, Konoha, it was probably "go eat".)]
no subject
Oh… That does sound nice, but I’m not sure where we could do something like that. I doubt the hotel staff would let us use their kitchen.
[Considering they’re kept busy all day preparing the free food available for the hotel residents, he’s betting the Valentia’s kitchen is a pretty busy place. Cooking there might be a bit hectic for their tastes even if they were allowed.]
I thought maybe you wanted to eat together. I suppose I didn’t catch your meaning quite as adroitly as I’d hoped.