Creature Languages, 1/19, Period 3

[game-of-you.livejournal.com]

Dream waits for most of the class to gather before beginning to speak.

"Hello. There is juice and tea at the front of class, should you want them.

One of the advantages of this class is that we can study some creatures who you would not have access to in the course of your normal lives. Today, the subject is dragons; specifically, Professor Tick's companion, Lockheed, who has graciously agreed to join us on Monday.

As some of you may know, Lockheed has origins in outer space, and looks like a cat-sized version of the dragons that lived in Europe and China in earlier centuries on some versions of Earth. He has purple skin, sharp claws and teeth, two small, curved horns protruding from the back of his head and wings that enable him to fly. He can breathe fire with extreme intensity and is a surprisingly formidable combatant for his size, having once destroyed a nest of Sidri hatchlings and at another time bested a fully armored medieval knight-in-training.

He is an empath, and therefore can understand questions posed to him. However, he rarely hears his own tongue in Fandom, though it is possible for humans to pronounce. The language of Dragon has a storied past; its most interesting feature is that, in truly formal Dragon, all words are spoken in rhyming couplets. However, that is not essential to its speech. I am handing out a vocabulary worksheet; please pair off and practice greeting each other and having simple conversations in Dragon. The rhyming is not necessary at this stage in your studies."

"For class on Monday, please show Lockheed the respect you would any other guest speaker by preparing a question to ask him in advance."

Comments

Re: Sign in

[soldtoarmenians]

"I don't think I've ever been, like, formally introduced to him, but I've seen him around campus," Xander said. "The dragons we have back home are a lot bigger and more with the demon than the alien, I think. Not that I've met one face to face, just read wayyy too many books that are a lot more boring than books that mention dragons should ever be."

Re: Sign in

[bruiser-in-pink.livejournal.com]

"Oh, he's really cool," Molly said. "I met him when I went looking for Professor Tick. Lockheed is from my world. He fought with Wolverine and a bunch of other people called the X-Men." Molly babbled for a bit, mostly about Wolverine, before realizing she was doing it. She stopped abruptly. "Ah, sorry. This isn't what we're supposed to be talking about." She grinned and then looked down at her vocabulary sheet.

Re: Sign in

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander looked down at his own sheet, and tilted his head at it. "Yeah, we're supposed to be -- ok, that word can't possibly be pronounced the way it looks. At leats not on primetime television."

He tried putting together a sentence.

//My name is Xander. Please don't eat me.//

And then, since, well, to rhymeis fun makes our speaking Dragon good? He tried another, even if they weren't actually required to.

//Though I've been told I'm kind of tasty.//

Re: Sign in

[bruiser-in-pink.livejournal.com]

Molly couldn't help it, she burst out laughing when she translated Xander's greeting.

"Oh, man. I don't think I can do the rhyming. Ummm, //Greetings. I am Molly. I fly you are having a good fish.//"

Re: Sign in

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander scratched noncommittally at hs chin.

"I... think that word might be pronounced with a long O. Either that or I just said "My name is Xander, please polish my floor."

Re: Class discussion

[bruiser-in-pink.livejournal.com]

Molly laughed and tried again, getting the pronunciation correct eventually.

"It's a good thing Lockheed will know what I mean, huh? I could get into big trouble if I was talking to any other dragon."

Re: Class discussion

[soldtoarmenians]

"We probably all would," Xander assured her. "You just know we'd all be saying things like 'Bite me' and 'So's your mom' if we coughed at the wrong time."