Chapter 9: 7: Learning the local language

As the boring days of being confined to an infant’s body in this nursery continue, I start to become bored rather quickly of my simple training routine to learn how to talk. However, becoming bored may in fact be a good sign of the improvement I am making. Well, I’m not really forming sounds all that much better, a lot of the sounds I make still don’t really sound like the letters I am trying to say, but at the very least my brain doesn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as it used to.

I am not entirely certain how many days it has been. It does not feel like it has been too long. In fact, it feels like it has probably been short enough that I shouldn’t be loosing track of how many days it has been. Wait! Have I lost my ability to keep track of and remember numbers and figures due to becoming a baby as well? That doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

At any rate, I think it has been somewhere around a week since I started sleeping with Gaerien and I next to each other between Rolwen and Levin. And, in this time, I have managed to start making a few of the softer consonant sounds a bit more like what they are supposed to sound like. I still can’t even come close to the hard consonants such as P or K, and I can’t make the “ch” sound necessary to say “H,” so it comes out sounding like another A as I say my alphabet still. However, I’ve managed to make some of the softer consonant sounds like M, or the ones that are easier for an infants mouth to form like B.

It’s really not as easy as it sounds, and it’s something you simply cannot appreciate if you’ve grown up speaking the language all your life and have no memory of how hard it was for you to learn to make these sounds as a baby. For instance, the M which I have now mastered involves 2 sounds. The first sound is actually the sound of an E, and next is the actual M sound. That’s not the hard part though. The hard part that takes a lot of practice to re-learn without a brain that has already mastered these skills is learning how to make a hard stop on the sound. It’s easy to just make a long “eeee” or “mmmm” as a baby, in fact those are very natural sounds for a baby to make. In fact, you will hear babies who are learning the limits and abilities of their bodies making those sounds all the time. That’s probably why M was such an easy letter for me to learn.

However, it is a lot harder to shorten the sounds, to exercise control over them by cutting off the air and changing your mouth shape at exactly the right time. I could hum the M sound forever, but to make a short “eh” first, and then cut off the sound the very second I make a short “m” is something that seems incredibly natural for someone who’s been doing it all their life but actually incredibly challenging for a newborn only a little over a week old.

Actually, for a week old newborn to even be doing as well as I am now is downright incredible already. If you take my age into consideration, I’m actually incredibly far ahead of every development benchmark. That lifts my spirits a little and keeps me from getting discouraged over my repeated failures to even do so much as talk, but there is no way I can be content with this. After all, I have memories of being an adult, one with quite a few life experiences one can be proud of if I do say so myself. However, now I am a useless infant who can do nothing but be held by someone while I babble and cry. There’s no way I can just accept that.

So, as I have had my eyes and ears develop enough now to begin properly perceiving my world and the restructuring of my brain to accommodate my attempts to talk ludicrously early are well underway, I am starting to feel like it’s about time I start on some other long term training projects to help me be more effective in this world. First off is the obvious companion to learning to talk.

Actually, it almost seems ridiculous I have been trying to learn to talk without doing this first. But, well, I already know English and there are also two boys here who also know English, so that gives me something most babies simply don’t have. However, even with that, it just seems like a good idea that I should probably be trying to learn the language spoken here. After all, the two boys here are about the only other people who speak English, I will also need to be speaking to the rest of this world.

I have been paying some attention to the words spoken, and I have begun to discern some patterns to the language. Actually, I seem to be picking up the language fairly quickly. Well, being fully immersed in the language helps a lot, so does the fact that I’m learning it as an adult. There is a myth from people too stubborn to learn foreign languages that babies are able to learn a foreign language faster and easier. This is actually very very wrong.

It takes a newborn around 4 years to fully master their birth language. This is around the same amount of time it takes an adult learning the language from a formal classroom setting to do the same. And this, actually, is something that should be considered ridiculously slow for someone who knows how language learning actually works.

As it turns out, the classroom setting is just about the worst environment to learn a language. The classroom setting just gives you lists of words and teaches you the translation. It teaches you to translate the words in your mind. This is a process that’s slow and ineffective in terms of how the human brain actually works when it’s trying to learn a language.

A far better way to learn the language is to simply hear the words as you are given their meaning in context, such as being shown a picture. This is the process employed by most language learning software. However, this is still not the best way. The single best and most effective way to learn a new language is actually the exact same way an infant learns it. That method is complete immersion.

Immersion means being placed into a situation where the language is all around you, and it is the only thing you hear every day without hearing anyone speak another language. In this situation, you either learn to adapt to the language or you can’t communicate. In this environment, all but the dullest of people can have their brains adapt very very quickly. Most, in fact, are able to speak and communicate within a few months, and gain complete mastery over the language within a single year.

So, when a perfectly average adult is able to learn the language within a year using this method, it means the typical infant is actually incredibly slow when it takes them 3 to 4 years to fully master their birth language. Then again, the infant’s brain is still developing, so it’s no surprise learning is more difficult. Really, the only reason an infant can even learn language in 4 years is because they have no other choice.

However, it seems that with my adult memories and the plasticity of my infant brain, I am able to direct my development and skip over a lot of the hurdles that get in the way and slow down the process for most babies. At the rate I’m currently going, I ought to be able to start at least understanding the gysts of what they are saying by the time I am a month old.

The other big project I have decided to start working on is becoming mobile. Reasonably speaking, this is something I ought not to even be capable of until I am at least 2 months old. However, you can call me stubborn, but I’m simply not willing to wait that long.

The biggest obstacle to me crawling at the very least is going to be my ability to hold my head up. Newborns do not even have the neck muscles to lift their own head. Also, they still seem to insist on keeping me wrapped in this tight blanket. It seriously limits my mobility. I’m going to need to throw it off, and I’m also going to need to do some neck exercises. They will probably wrap me up again if I throw it off during the day, but at the very least the mere act of learning how to throw it off will be exercise.

So, moving forward, I will be continuing to train in the alphabet at night, I will learn the local language during the day, and I can try to move at any time night or day. With three valid methods of training, now I will be able to always do something to avoid the boredom I was beginning to feel.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten my main objective in all of this either. I’ve been monitoring the boys’ signs of health the entire time, but they have not been acting lethargic or anything. In fact, they genuinely seem quite energetic and don’t seem to like being bound down having to take care of Gaerien and I very much. They do seem to accept that they can’t just leave us alone now, and they know that the older kids and the caretaker woman watching over us won’t let them, but they also seem to be quite bored and have taken to complaining lately that there really is nothing to really do.

They even started arm wrestling the other day, placing Gaerien and I off to lay right beside them as they lay on their stomachs and have at it with each other. It turned out being Rolwen who won, but by the mere fact that nobody found this behavior strange it proved something to me. It seems the people here have very little of the modern day understanding of childhood growth and development, because what these two boys are doing is something a 6 year old would do, not a 1 to 2 year old.

2 year olds usually do not really interact with other children near their own age when they play. In fact, they usually do not really want anything to do with other children their own age until they are about 3, and even then they don’t exactly play “with each other.” They will play “together,” but there won’t be anything in it that could be called interacting. Rather, they will just be sitting next to each other as they are each doing their own thing. It’s not until they reach around 5 or 6 that they would even think to do what these two boys were just doing. And yet, nobody here seemed to find their arm wrestling and other types of interaction strange.

Or rather, at least I don’t think anyone did. For the past few days, that guy who seemed to be some kind of doctor or something had been by here more frequently. Since this place seemed to be inside of a large tree or something, I really couldn’t assess the culture level of this area or the size of the community, but it is entirely possible he’s in more of a shaman type role, one where he has some kind of prominent position in the village in addition to being a healer, and he’s here for some other reason. However, a village leader doesn’t seem like a position that would be spending a lot of time hanging around some nursery, unless…

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Maybe they are onto something about the boys here. He does not seem the least bit interested in any of the other children here. In fact, from the best I can tell, he seems to have ordered the caretaker woman here to keep the other children away from him. Meanwhile, he spends most of his time observing the four of us. However, I cannot really tell whether it’s Gaerien and I, or the two boys he’s more interested in. If we are truly in some kind of condition that worries them then it makes sense for him to keep observing us, but he also seems to attempt to interact with the boys quite frequently. Of course, this whole time he has also been continuing to administer Gaerien and I our “medicine” or whatever it is. Those berries he crushes between his fingers before making us lick the juice. So, from the best I can tell, it really could be either way.

The bigger concern though is how he seems to interact with the other children here. As he has been observing us, I have been observing him right back. At least, whenever I’m able to direct my eyes toward him when Levin is not grabbing me and turning me in a direction that doesn’t face him. Did I mention? It is REALLY frustrating being a baby. At any rate, during the times I could see and observe this guy, I have caught sight of him giving some rather irritated looking glances toward the other children, even when they weren’t interacting with him and simply playing near him.

Well, this is not enough to judge his character on just yet, but I must say it does not leave a favorable impression in my mind as to his character. I’m definitely going to have to learn the elfin language. My lack of ability with it is just cutting off too much information.

As these thoughts were rolling over in my mind, I continued to watch the elfin medicine man, or whatever he was. Yes, medicine man seemed like a perfectly good title for him from my infant perspective. Whether or not he was actually a “medicine man” by the anthropological definition was yet to be seen, but from my infant perspective he was the man who gave me medicine, therefore I felt Ok with calling him the “medicine man,” and felt myself somehow acclimating into my infant mind a little more.

Having settled on this title for him, I saw the medicine man stand up and talk to the caretaker woman. He asked her about something, looking in our direction for a moment, before giving a serious look back at the woman. She seemed to be thinking very seriously for a while about his words, but then finally started talking to him. Judging by the look and the way they were interacting, it seemed like she was explaining something to him. Finally, after a while, she quickly walked off to the nearby cabinets and brought back a wooden cup from which the children had been drinking. She held it up to him, pointed to it, and said some more things before handing it over to him.

They separated after this, and he seemed to give a nod and turned toward us with a resigned look on his face as he approached our little group of four. He knelt down, held up the cup, and… “kwayuln,” he said, pointing to it. A huge smile spread across my face as my suspicions from the earlier interaction between him and the caretaker were confirmed. Yes! It seemed almost as though divine providence had intervened. Just when I had started trying to think of how to learn the elfin language, the medicine man decided to teach it to us. Well, in all honesty, he’s probably making the effort to teach it to the boys because there’s no way someone could be expecting a baby to learn it. I’ll take the lesson gladly though.

“kwayuln.” He repeats looking from Rolwen to Levin with an expectant look on his face. “kwayuln.”

““Kwayuln!”” Rolwen and Levin both say, their excited voices sounding off almost in unison as they have also realized what’s going on. Both of them are looking at the medicine man here with their full attention focused on him. It seems they were every single bit as eager to learn the elfin language as I was, and now that they saw their opportunity they were ready, willing, and eager to learn.

The teacher medicine man has a satisfied smile creep to his lips for a moment, and I’m forced to chuckle at myself as I realized just how childish my thought process seems to be rapidly becoming as I am already adding teacher to my informal title for him in my mind, and legitimately thinking of him that way.

The teacher medicine man seems troubled for a moment as he looks around the room, before directing his gaze downward and placing an open palm on the floor. “Talan.” He says. The boys seem to look around trying to piece this one together as they repeat the word to each other.

“Talan.” They mutter, and then begin slapping the floor happily.

“Talan!”

“Talan!”

They repeat the word, one right after another as they both slap the floor confident in their interpretation.

The teacher medicine man seems very pleased with this, and quickly begins to look for the next thing to teach us. He gets a little closer and points his finger directly at me. “Nette.” He says, and then moves his finger up to point at Levin. “Yonte.” “Nette, yonte.” He begins moving his finger pointing between Levin and I as he repeats what seem to be the elfin words for “boy” and “girl” until they properly repeat these words.

Next, he rests his hand gently against my… well, due to my small size his hand encompases my entire left side as he rests his hand on my torso area. “Laito.” He says. “Netti-laito. Laito.”

In this manner, the newly dubbed teacher medicine man teaches us one elfin word after another, and as Levin and Rolwen take his lesson I silently watch from the side and absorb every word for myself as well. Seems my attempts to learn elfin might be easier than I though. Once I learn a few starting words to go on, however long the teacher medicine man is willing to stick around to teach us, I will be able to more easily piece together the rest of it by listening in on the conversations of others.

Surprisingly enough, the answer to how long the teacher medicine man would be able to stick around was… all day. He seemed to grow increasingly excited as he taught us, and began pulling things from all over the room to teach us new words. And then, when he ran out of things in the room to pull, he kept frantically looking around before finally dashing out. Around 15 minutes later, he returned with an arm full of stuff to also teach us the words for.

The breaks helped, but after a while despite their eagerness to learn and the maturity they had from their previous life incarnations, the boys began to get fussy and began acting out and looking away from the teacher medicine man who I think might have said his name as one of the words he taught us at some point. At least, it sounded like it was probably a name. I was getting a little overwhelmed myself so I think I probably forgot it along with over half the other words I had crammed into my head in this little encounter.

Eventually, after he began to actually start becoming slightly angry and talking to us, or the boys at least, in a more stern voice, the caretaker lady wound up coming to our rescue. She pleaded with him a little and told him something, perhaps the common sense that their brains can only absorb so much information at once. That’s likely the case anyway, and once she finished explaining it to him he seemed to sigh with a slightly annoyed look and a roll of the eyes before talking to the two boys in a tender seeming tone before he stood up and finally left for the remainder of the day.

Well, my evaluation of this guy is starting to shift a little now. The teacher medicine man has gone from “maybe an ass-hole” to “just socially awkward.” At any rate, it looks like I have gotten one issue solved. I can see several long days ahead of the four of us though. Well, maybe not Gaerien. For all I know, she might have just fallen asleep at some point. Now I REALLY need to work on my neck muscles so I can look around better.

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