Private Speaking in Vulgar Tongues [Vulgar Kumo learning]

[Notamashi Yuuto]

[OOC: For clarity's sake, this post is a backflash]
"το γυναίκα... Is that right? Or is it την? There are so many types of the... what's an 'accusative feminine singular'?" An unfamiliar village, with its unfamiliar tongue... but maybe being able to speak it would help him fit in more. But there were all these words to trawl through, and he felt as if he was barely getting anywhere at all. The words were hard enough to put to paper, let alone the difficulty of pronouncing them correctly. Despite these difficulties, Yuuto continues to trudge forwards, his mind buzzing with words and pronunciations.

"So, you use την for things that have things happen to them, kind of? So 'the dog chased the woman' is...whatever 'the dog chased' is in Vulgar Kumo, then την γυναίκα? Wait. No. They have 'the's for different word startings?" Yuuto groans. Another rule to add to his growing list of notes... "Alright...so it's τη γυναίκα if the woman's the 'target', I suppose would be the word. Okay, that's...not too bad, maybe?" He begins to scrawl on paper before him, brief notes detailing when to use them. τη for sentence 'targets', την when the target starts with a vowel or 'hard' sound...after cracking through the frustration of finding his little errors, the little rules didn't see so bad. And how many variations of the word 'the' could the Ancient Kumogakurians come up with?

The answer was twenty, Yuuto would come to learn. Masculine, feminine, neutral, singular, plural... His tired eyes drift over towards the window, where the warm light of sunset begins to shine through.

"...I can pick this up again tomorrow," He tells himself, putting the books back in their place before picking up his notes and walking out of the library.

[WC: 265]

 

[Notamashi Yuuto]

"Tenses. Present, for actions being done now, future for things happening later, imperfect for things that...started in the past, but are still happening, and perfect is for things that have happened and finished. Pluperfect is for stuff that happened at a certain point... wait, is that right? No... no, that's aorist, I think. Or wait, aorist for the past in general, pluperfect for...oh right, things done before other things. Then there's perfect but it's the future, which is basically aorist but the future version? For deadlines and stuff done by tomorrow, I think. And now, write examples for each..." One of the tutors at the academy had been kind enough to give Yuuto tasks to help broaden his studying when he had found out about it a few months ago. It had significantly helped him; his pronunciation was far better now, the words no longer as foreign as they had been before, and his translations were far more natural, came to mind much easier. But tenses were still a struggle for the boy, remembering the appropriate words and choices for what he wanted to say. Present was naturally the easiest, but figuring out which of three past tenses was appropriate was harder.

"Ο σκύλος πηδάει πάνω από το φράχτη. That's present, simple. Now, future perfect... Ο σκύλος θα πηδήξει πάνω από το φράχτη αύριο. Wait, or is that what you use for regular future tense? No, I don't think...or is there even a difference? ...Moving on, imperfect... Ο σκύλος πηδούσε πάνω από το φράχτη. Yeah, I think I'm finally getting this. So perfect would be Ο σκύλος πήδηξε πάνω από το φράχτη, and aorist is Ο σκύλος πήδηξε πάνω από το φράχτη. I think." Stretching out, Yuuto lets out a sigh. "That was...less painful than I expected. I guess using them becomes easier when you're in a proper conversation. Τουλάχιστον δεν ήταν τόσο δύσκολο όσο νόμιζα." He says to himself, smiling at how far his lessons had brought him.

[WC: 328, Topic Left]