Moving on with the day.
—-
There will not be a comic, per se, on a Wednesday. There will be an UPDATE. But not in comic form.
Mwa ha ha
Pak means "yes", or more of a general affirmative.
Moving on with the day.
—-
There will not be a comic, per se, on a Wednesday. There will be an UPDATE. But not in comic form.
Mwa ha ha
So echoes get precognitive abilities too, wonder why anyone hasn’t mentioned that before.
I wouldn’t read too much into it… I think the last panel is more of a playful 4th-wall joke directed at us, than a serious bit of world-building. It certainly made me laugh!
If Echoes don’t actually turn out to have Jedi-type precog, I’ll still love this page.
Ah… maybe. I seem to remember being an echo explained as they are attuned to resonance waves that all sarnothi generate or something? Being able to pick up some vibes through that would actually make sense though!
Also, with the echos of Great Sensei Obi Wan Kenobi, there are echos of St. Alia of the knife. Get ready for the dramatic reveal! Dune-Dune-DUNNNNNe!
Or more likely, she could have just overheard them at the door of the classroom, and correctly realized that more “homework” will be forthcoming if the speech therapy course gets approved.
…are Sarnothi… well, I guess they would be. I was ready to call it weird that they quickly used “TH” sound, but it’s (a) a fricative, which they probably have more facility with, and (b) in their species name, so never mind.
I wonder which sounds they have trouble with, though? Which sounds would a lot of them end up mispronouncing, at least at first?
There may well be a number of odd intonations, but the most established “pronunciation” challenge seems to be the tendency to “over pluralize” due to Tensai having very different and nuanced rules for using plurals in their language.
Some European languages, like French, use plural pronouns to convey more importance (or politeness implying importance of the person you’re speaking to) and even English has “the Royal We” used by the sitting monarch of England. Tensei obviously uses very different rules for pluralizations, going far beyond just pronouns, but I’m just offering forth these examples of how that isn’t entirely unknown in human languages either.
I think Selkie’s speech pattern is not so much “inappropriate plural” as “superfluous S” — she adds it to nouns that are already plural, to verbs (where a final S actually takes it from plural to singular!), and to other parts of speech where it makes no sense at all. And children learn language by imitation, not by doing morpheme-for-morpheme translation from a language they already know. It would make more sense for this to be an anatomical issue, not linguistic.
Honestly, I’d think that the ‘th’ would be one of the hardest for them, due to the position of the tongue on the tips of the teeth- the very, very sharp teeth, in their case.
But again, “Sarnoth” and the like. Perhaps ‘v’, for similar reasons? They might have tongue structures that allow for an alternate pronunciation method for the ‘th’.
“R” could prove to be unexpectedly difficult too…especially if one’s native language uses a different version of “R” than in English (which is, honestly, most languages) or that it doesn’t distinguish “r” and “l”.
And then there is the phonotactics, the way sounds are combined…I know from personal experience that “downtown” is difficult for Mandarin speakers (because we don’t have nasals after diphthongs)
Even with a human mouth you can make a “th” by placing the tongue *behind* the teeth instead of on their edge. It’s a little weird if that’s not how you practiced it, but I think that’s mostly habit.
It’s also possible that sarnothi tongues/lips are just not as frail as a human’s and can make casual contact with their sharper teeth without risk of injury. At the same time humans have hurt their tongues with their teeth, how often do you cut yourself on your own incisors or canines?
Some Welsh sounds are supposedly difficult for English-speakers, though I can’t say it took any of my English friends long to get the hang of them. Some of the vowel clusters, maybe (Welsh uses vowels sparingly for the most part, then binges ion them in some names, like Ieuan).
Welsh plurality has it’s moments, though. The third person singular does a lot more work amongst plural constructions than is typical in English, French or German. If there’s a Sarnothi plural verb-form that does something similar, this may be why there’s a tendency to pluralize in single-person verbs and on substantives.
Uhm… am I the only one who doesn’t get the jump from the former page to this one? I am confused…
No real jump. The last page ended with the realization that they all had a big communication problem here.
Then Tehk’s parents just remembered one of the very few English phrases they know, which let them get their feelings across. Tod then taught them the appropriate response. It’s a start.
Yes, well explained. Minor detail, though… one that probably is going to turn out to be not that minor later on: these aren’t his parents, they’re his aunt and uncle (father’s brother).
They seem to care about him. But judging by how sensitive Tehk is on the point, something’s wrong.
Oh Selkie, you’re eight and you have a parent who cares about how you spend your time.
You never really had any “free” time in the first place.
Kids can be so awful to a kid who has a speach impediment. One of my friends growing up had trouble with W and R, and would meet with the Speach Pathologist for an hour once a week. He caught so much crap for it, although NO ONE had any trouble understanding him. He was so smart he knew enough words to pick from a list, to mitigate the number of words with W in them. Was a really good friend, maybe because he was so empathetic to others who were marginalized?
I was put into speech classes to eliminate a minor lisp when I was in elementary(that’s the school you attend between the ages of 6 and 11±1 for our non-American readers.) Some days I suspect I was mostly in there for the benefit of another student who, despite living in the Americas all his life, and his parents both having a ‘normal’ North Texas accent, spoke with a pronounced British RP accent everywhere BUT in the Speech Therapy Room.
The poor aunt looks so gaunt and disheveled 🙁
You’ll be grateful later, Selkie.
The Force strong in this one!