fandomhigh | Discovering Earth, Friday, Period 2

When class met today, Hannibal had a sketchpad under one arm, and was dressed in a jaunty and very Italian suit and hat. Not that the students could probably tell the difference. He was also in a very good mood for a number of reasons, only one of which was their destination.

"Good day, class. Today, we will be visiting Rome. Specifically, the Colosseum. The building is roughly two thousand years old, and is the largest amphitheater built on Earth. It is considered a World Heritage Site, and for good reason - it's one of Italy's most identifiable symbols. It was recently cleaned and renovated, and now the public can even visit the tunnels underneath that were used to house and bring in scenery, beasts, and gladiators."

"Sounds like something some of the more infamous Hutts from my galaxy would love," Kanan mused, scratching his beard and smirking faintly. "And two thousand years old? That's kind of cute. Earth, you're cute."

And Kanan, you were an ass.

Hannibal was used to it by now; he simply gave Kanan a slightly exasperated look.

"In its heyday, the Colosseum was used for everything from dramas, to gladiatorial combat, to sea battles - they would flood the entire floor and bring in boats. There are currently plans to complete the renovations and open it to hosting cultural events, although it may be some time until that happens."

"I'm guessing they aren't planning on flooding the place again," Kanan noted. "Now there's something I'd love to see."

What? He'd seen plenty of space battles. But boats? On the water? Not so much.

"It does sound fascinating, doesn't it? So." Hannibal waved them through the portal. "Enjoy the history and the architecture, or if you prefer, the shopping and food of Rome. I'll be staying a bit longer to take it all in myself, so there will be a later portal as well."

Maybe he'd call Jono and see if he wanted to join him.

"We'll see if I stick around," Kanan added, looking thoughtful. "Old ruins like this always kind of creeped me out."

He'd been raised a Jedi. This was patently untrue.

And Hannibal, who wasn't fooled, gave him a curious look for that, but decided not to bring it up in front of the students.

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Fortunately, Hannibal could get it from context. "Hacking, we'd say here, of breaking into a computer system. But yes, I take confidentiality very seriously. Also, I enjoy writing. There's a preciseness to calligraphy that can be quite lovely."

"Hacking," Kanan echoed, and then frowned a bit and shook his head. "I like slicing better. Sounds less like a butcher job and more like somebody went in with some kind of precision to do the job."

Kanan had Opinions. Always had, always would.

"And calligraphy sounds like quite the art. I don't know that aurebesh lends itself so well to it, but High Galactic... uh... whatever it is you call your more common alphabet here... certainly seems to."

Hannibal nodded. "It does." He flipped his sketchbook to a new page and wrote his own name with a number of calligraphic flourishes as demonstration. Then he thought for a moment and held the pad and pencil out to Kanan. "Show me your aurebesh."

Kanan looked thoughtfully at Hannibal's calligraphy, and then shrugged, took the pencil and paper, and wrote down his own name.

Then he passed the pad and pencil right back.

"It's nothing fancy," he noted. "The pencil doesn't do it much justice, really. Some of the alphabet has tapering that's hard to get with a tip like that. But there it is. I could write out the entire alphabet, if you wanted."

"Please," Hannibal said, delighted. "Are the letters a one-to-one correspondance with ours?"

"For the most part," Kanan agreed, "though we have a few extras besides."

He turned the notepad to a fresh page, shrugged, and started writing them out, then writing the name of each letter and the sound it would correspond to in the High Galactic/local Earth alphabet, for reference.

"Like thesh, for the 'th' sound. Or nen, for a 'ng.' And then there's the punctuation..."

And now he was writing that out, too, with ease.

"English used to have letters for those, but they were mostly supplanted by our current alphabet," Hannibal said, watching as Kanan wrote the letters. "Some of these look more like runes, or Hebrew. Other alphabets," he explained.

"Are they ones that I'm going to want to learn if I'm sticking around here for a while?"

He'd noticed that some of the places Hannibal had taken his classes in the past had used different alphabets, of course. Now seemed like as good a time to ask about them as any.

"Only if you're curious," Hannibal said. "I don't know them myself."

Kanan considered that for a moment, and then shrugged.

"I'll think about it," he decided, "and maybe take a peek if I get bored or something. You've got an impressive number of alphabets for just one planet. Is the one you use the one most commonly found everywhere?"

Because that would be the one he'd want, just in case.

"In large parts of the world, yes," Hannibal said. "But if you go to China, Japan again, India, or eastern Europe, they largely use different ones."

Because Earth.

Kanan pursed his lips a little, and then nodded.

"Then that'll be something to look into learning in my spare time," he decided. "It's productive, at the very least."

"No learning is ever wasted," Hannibal said. "The cyrillic and semitic alphabets have quite a bit of overlap with the one we use - many of the letters, as with this," he gestured at the aurebesh, "are a one-to-one correspondence."

Just never try to learn Sanskrit. That way lay heartache and headaches.

Kanan would totally start with sanskrit, just to keep himself applied to something. So there.

"Well, that's useful," he mused. "I suppose I'd have to learn the languages that go with them, as well?"

Because of course Earth had about a million of those, too.

"If you want them to be useful as more than an interesting way of writing English - or Basic - yes," Hannibal agreed. "I know Russian, which uses the cyrillic alphabet, but you'd be on your own for Hebrew or Arabic."

"Wouldn't be the first language I've picked up," Kanan noted. "Of course, most of the ones I know that aren't Basic, I can't even speak."

Ithorese was a fantastic language that didn't work so well coming from people who didn't have two mouths.

"You know them only to write, or your biology doesn't allow you to speak them?" Hannibal asked.

"That second one," Kanan replied, snapping his fingers. "I have yet to meet a human who can handle Ithorese, and binary is a little too beep-boop for me to care to try."

Chopper would probably get a kick out of it, though. Before using his stunner on Kanan's knee.

Very likely.

Hannibal laughed. "I'd like you hear you try, though. I can only imagine."

"Hey, you heard Chopper when Hera took our class up a few weeks back," Kanan snorted. "Did that sound like something that should ever come out of a human mouth?"

"Not at all," Hannibal said, grinning. "That's why I'd love to hear you try."

Discovering Earth, Friday, Period 2

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