01-05-2010, 11:56 PM
[html]
[/html]
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad34 ... s/truc.png); background-repeat:no-repeat; padding-top:187px; background-position:top center; background-color:#F8BB4D; text-align:justify; font-family:georgia; font-size:11px; color:#AB360D; line-height:15px;padding-bottom:10px;">
@&#&$Anselm considered his own exposure to foreign language "adequate;" by that, he could identify the more common accents. He wouldn't have been able to place Rurik's as Russian before meeting the monochrome werewolf, although he had at least heard of the country--it was fucking huge and pretty hard to miss on the dusty world maps he'd seen in the city's empty classrooms. As for actual fluency, English was the only language he could speak well and read or write to any appreciable extent.
@&#&$His mother, a Mexican wolf and desert coyote mix, had impressed some of the Spanish language upon her son while he was growing up--though he might sound rather daft to a native speaker, he was at least functional to the point where he understood the gist of others' conversations (supposing they talked slowly enough) and he could convey his own basic messages. Trying to decipher it in print would've been completely hopeless were the language not so phonetic. If he struggled he could sound out the words, but he barely had enough patience to read in English. So far the only documents he'd found en español were small glossy books (magazines) about (apparently) popular humans whose worth he could not tell anyway, and now he passed by anything not written in English without a second thought. Needless to say, he certainly couldn't write in Spanish.
@&#&$At any rate, he was pretty sure it didn't matter. If nothing else, one thing had remained constant since man's demise--foreigners who turned up around these parts usually spoke English. If he intended to travel around the globe as Rurik had, he'd probably need to brush up on his existing skills and expand further. As such journeys were nowhere near the horizon, however, he considered it a non-issue. The wolf had a smooth tongue and a fairly extensive vocabulary, but on the whole he was not very linguistically (or artistically) inclined. He was more scientific, and some languages were so convoluted it was nigh impossible for him to find enough regular patterns or rules to "get it" without growing frustrated and giving up. Spanish really was one of the easy ones.
@&#&$"Pretty sure if anything else starts coming out coherent I'd be a man possessed," he joked back, still appreciative of the humour and not even sparing a thought for his mediocre Spanish. Instead he simply took the smouldering bowl and nursed it gently, causing the material to smoke while sparing the lighter's fuel. Even as he held the hit in, he took a second piece of paper and began to scrawl some fertilisation instructions (which basically consisted of finding some dirt--preferably dark in colour and light in density--from the forest floor, avoiding sand, gravel, and clay). He exhaled off to the side, glancing up only at the other man's question.
@&#&$"Well hopefully," he said, knowing better than to make a promise on anything where so many variables were involved. "This should get you going in the right direction, at least; a lot of it is just paying attention to the plants. If they start turning yellow or the tips start dying, there's something wrong; check my notes. The other thing I didn't write here, 'n I know it sounds weird, is you've got to kill the males. Only the flowering plants are good for anything, and if they get fertilised, they're actually less potent." He'd been fairly vigilant over the course of the summer--of course some would always slip through the cracks, thus the seeds he had left to distribute or plant again, but he'd largely kept it to a minimum. "I can show you the leaves of the two sexes in a bit so you can tell the difference, but it usually helps to have a magnification lens," he explained.
@&#&$He nudged the bowl back over; he'd need more time to finish up his own notes before getting started on the brewing process. "Hold up; my hand ain't used to this shit," he said lightly, scarcely ashamed. At least he could manage anything at all. With a few more minutes of dedicated focus, he managed to complete his lighting notes. Here he took both pieces of paper and tucked them into one of the protective plastic covers. "Whew; alright, go ahead." He shifted the marker around a bit in his hand; at least it was thicker than a pen or a pencil. For his own notes he was hoping a few key words would be sufficient--just enough to jog his memory later.
mall-caps;font-weight:bold;text-align:right; border-top:1px solid #AB360D">SoSuWriMo +757
@&#&$His mother, a Mexican wolf and desert coyote mix, had impressed some of the Spanish language upon her son while he was growing up--though he might sound rather daft to a native speaker, he was at least functional to the point where he understood the gist of others' conversations (supposing they talked slowly enough) and he could convey his own basic messages. Trying to decipher it in print would've been completely hopeless were the language not so phonetic. If he struggled he could sound out the words, but he barely had enough patience to read in English. So far the only documents he'd found en español were small glossy books (magazines) about (apparently) popular humans whose worth he could not tell anyway, and now he passed by anything not written in English without a second thought. Needless to say, he certainly couldn't write in Spanish.
@&#&$At any rate, he was pretty sure it didn't matter. If nothing else, one thing had remained constant since man's demise--foreigners who turned up around these parts usually spoke English. If he intended to travel around the globe as Rurik had, he'd probably need to brush up on his existing skills and expand further. As such journeys were nowhere near the horizon, however, he considered it a non-issue. The wolf had a smooth tongue and a fairly extensive vocabulary, but on the whole he was not very linguistically (or artistically) inclined. He was more scientific, and some languages were so convoluted it was nigh impossible for him to find enough regular patterns or rules to "get it" without growing frustrated and giving up. Spanish really was one of the easy ones.
@&#&$"Pretty sure if anything else starts coming out coherent I'd be a man possessed," he joked back, still appreciative of the humour and not even sparing a thought for his mediocre Spanish. Instead he simply took the smouldering bowl and nursed it gently, causing the material to smoke while sparing the lighter's fuel. Even as he held the hit in, he took a second piece of paper and began to scrawl some fertilisation instructions (which basically consisted of finding some dirt--preferably dark in colour and light in density--from the forest floor, avoiding sand, gravel, and clay). He exhaled off to the side, glancing up only at the other man's question.
@&#&$"Well hopefully," he said, knowing better than to make a promise on anything where so many variables were involved. "This should get you going in the right direction, at least; a lot of it is just paying attention to the plants. If they start turning yellow or the tips start dying, there's something wrong; check my notes. The other thing I didn't write here, 'n I know it sounds weird, is you've got to kill the males. Only the flowering plants are good for anything, and if they get fertilised, they're actually less potent." He'd been fairly vigilant over the course of the summer--of course some would always slip through the cracks, thus the seeds he had left to distribute or plant again, but he'd largely kept it to a minimum. "I can show you the leaves of the two sexes in a bit so you can tell the difference, but it usually helps to have a magnification lens," he explained.
@&#&$He nudged the bowl back over; he'd need more time to finish up his own notes before getting started on the brewing process. "Hold up; my hand ain't used to this shit," he said lightly, scarcely ashamed. At least he could manage anything at all. With a few more minutes of dedicated focus, he managed to complete his lighting notes. Here he took both pieces of paper and tucked them into one of the protective plastic covers. "Whew; alright, go ahead." He shifted the marker around a bit in his hand; at least it was thicker than a pen or a pencil. For his own notes he was hoping a few key words would be sufficient--just enough to jog his memory later.
mall-caps;font-weight:bold;text-align:right; border-top:1px solid #AB360D">SoSuWriMo +757