Digiport 03

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

[Takeru appears on the plane, with a rather comfy chair. He's curled up on it, with some textbooks and workbooks and a little lap desk.]

Mmm... [He flips through one of the textbooks and rubs his forehead. He's kind of muttering to himself.]

Why is this language so difficult? It's insane...

[He closes the textbook and leans back in the chair.]

[For those interested, thanks to Plane magic/meddling/etc., the title can be clearly read as 'English for Secondary School Students'. Or something along those lines.]

At least I can take a break here. Time differences aren't so bad, sometimes. More hours in the day to get stuff done...

Comments

[collareddog.livejournal.com]

[Rico picks up the text book he's just closed, and opens it at a random page.] Is it more difficult than math?

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

[He looks up.]

Well, it depends. Once you get over teh completely different writing system, and the fact that the rules of the language have a lot of exceptions, it's not so bad.

... But at least the symbols are usually pretty much the same in math.

[lamb_of_gold]

Language takes time.

[crowheaded.livejournal.com]

[Ikki catches the title.]

English is only good for two things: hitting on chicks, and cussing out assholes.

[collareddog.livejournal.com]

I guess. I don't think English is that different from Italian, but it's still not easy to understand.

I think math is probably slightly easier when you start to understand it.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

[His eyes go kind of wide.] Italian? Is that what you're speaking right now? ... Huh. I guess this place translates for us. I'm speaking Japanese.

Yeah. It is. Though most of the math we're doing right now bores me. [He props his chin up on his hand.] I'm writing computer code. I think I can handle more than just pre-algebra.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

Mm. I guess. But it's just frustrating when it doesn't follow a pattern all the time. Computer code doesn't deviate from what's written in its 'rules'. English seems to have exceptions all over the place.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

I'm not interested right now in the first, and as for the second, I've picked up enough slang from the other guys on my basketball team to do that.

[collareddog.livejournal.com]

[Stares for a moment, because even though she's been coming for a while, she hasn't worked that out yet.] Japanese? I don't speak any Japanese. I didn't know this place could translate as well.

Ah. Computer code? [It doesn't really take a lot to impress Rico, so writing computer code is definitely more than enough to do the trick.]

[crowheaded.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah. TV is good for that too.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

I guess it can.

[Takeru nods.] Lots of it. I've been doing it for a while. For some reason I picked it up pretty quickly.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I don't have much time for watching TV anymore, in between practice, homework, cram school, and all the other stuff I have to do...

[lamb_of_gold]

English is quite bad for it's irregularity, but any language is like that. For example, French will break its own rules simply for the sake of sounding better.

[miseardae.livejournal.com]

[a faint smile, amused but sympathetic, as he glances at the book] Ah, English. Full to brimming with contradictions, that one.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

... I guess it's a good thing I'm not taking that, too.

[He sighs.]

... Then again, I've seen a lot of foreigners complain about the fact that Japanese has so many kanji. I can kind of see their point...

[Aaaand he looks over at Mu.]

So are you speaking French, Japanese, or something else right now?

[lamb_of_gold]

Tibetan, actually, though I switch back and fort to Greek quite a bit. Sometimes Mandarin.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

Something like that, yeah.

But it's a required class. It's just a pain sometimes.

[collareddog.livejournal.com]

Ah. I guess so.

Maybe you're just good at it? Or maybe your situation means you adapted more quickly.

[mercwamouth]

You could just keep your books here and come here during tests. Boom, perfect grades, no studying.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

I could, but that would be cheating.

[And cheating is evil. And he's trying to prevent evil. ... In his own way.]

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

Maybe. It's probably spending all that time in a place made of data... it was bound to pay off somehow.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

... That's quite a mix of languages. What's your world like, where you have to speak all of those?

[lamb_of_gold]

I was born in, and spent much of my adolescence in Tibet. I live in Greece currently, and travel to China very often. I speak some English, but it's rather poor.

[digitale-daten.livejournal.com]

Ah. It must be fun, traveling around. Do you travel for business or just to sightsee?

[lamb_of_gold]

Duty, actually.