To the Library! Open!

[clarityinchaos]

Who| Armin Arlert, Guy Crood, Hanji Zoe, and whoever might like to drop by.
What| Library shenanigans, reading lessons, and probably being louder than they should be.
Where| The main Capitol library.
When| Guy's thread is pre Mini-Arena, Hanji's is during the Mini-Arena, and everyone els sometime while the Thicker than Blood plot is going on. Bring your beloved family members to the hottest spot in the Capitol.
Warnings/Notes| Possible spoilers for more recent chapters of Attack on Titan. Will update this if that actually occurs.


For Guy
So far, the lessons were going well. Guy was eager to learn, but sometimes he got sidetracked with a lot of questions that Armin couldn't hope to answer. In a way, they were in a similar situation, technological differences aside. As much as he didn't want to really put himself out there and get close to people he might end up having to kill later, he couldn't survive the Capitol alone. Especially with Eren gone.

Armin had started him on recognizing the various letters and the sounds they typically made. Children's books were useful, even if not particularly stimulating. Before too long guy would be ready for encyclopedias and newspapers.

"...except when it looks like this, and it means something that belongs to a group of people. Plural possessive." Today was homonyms and homophones. "If you were talking a lot about your friend's family's house, you wouldn't just keep writing 'my friend's family's house'. It's shorter to just write 'their house' because the reader can easily tell who you're referring to." Sure, Guy spoke just fine, but he was sure he'd appreciate the names and types of speech and the whys of language patterns they all took for granted. "Am I explaining it okay so far?" He'd never really taught anyone anything before.


For Hanji
Spurred on by Hanji's interest, they headed into the technology section of the library. Pragmatism had brought Armin to books about the natural world they had been brought to, but there were other gaps that needed filling as well. And Hanji would be an interesting research partner to say the least.

He seemed to have zeroed in on a section about transportation technology, like the train he'd ridden on, as well as others that were 'obsolete' by Panem standards. Like primitive flying machines, and hot air balloons.


Open to All
Armin was once again returning to the library. The staff here had gotten used enough to seeing him that he usually had some small talk to share with them as he dropped off his previous round of books and started in for another. There were a lot of extra people around the Tower, but no one that he knew. So, he decided the best course of action was to just hide from all the noise and find something to bury his nose in for the day.

He had gotten a bit too into something he had picked out before he even made it to a table. He had a book open on top of a small stack of other books that he was actually reading while he was walking. Thus, he missed that someone else had moved into his path. Hopefully they weren't particularly annoyed by having a few books dropped onto them. "Sorry! I wasn't paying attention..."

Comments

[observationalhazard]

Flying machines. They had flying machines. They were theoretically possible, of course, but nothing had ever gotten off the ground at home (partially because of the secret police, admittedly). Hanji has her nose buried in a book on airplanes, studying a diagram of a wing and the basic concept of lift. She murmurs to herself in concentration, making mental notes, and then glances up at Armin with a wide, enthusiastic grin.

"They can fly, Armin! And it's so simple! Well, in theory anyway! I'm not sure if we have the negines for this, but we could probably at least try at home - think of what we could use air travel for! Not just scouting, but moving people and cargo around!"

[clarityinchaos]

Armin was rather enjoying spending time with Hanji like this. It felt more normal. "Yeah! And even these balloons. We could definitely put this together at home." Well, he did know to be quiet in a library, but Hanji's excitement was rather infectious.

His eyes landing on the book about the Capitol train that runs to the Districts reminded him. He flipped the book open and found the relevant route. "We were all sent out to visit the districts shortly after I arrived and we took this train. This river is nearly 2000 meters wide." He pointed at one that traversed the continent north to south.

[acroodawakening]

He was picking it all up very fast but that meant that now they were digging into the nitty gritty confusing stuff already.

"You're explaining it very well so far. You're doing an excellent job," Guy said. "This language just makes no sense. None."

They'd figured out a way around the language translation for him to learn the language so he could learn reading at all. If Armin sounded out the individual sounds slowly that made up an English word, Guy could hear the sounds that made up the word and then he had to try to put them together to say it correctly. If he got them wrong they just sounded like nonsense sounds, which didn't translate. When he got them right, it was just a word.

So vocab was easy. So easy. He had a natural talent for language and learning new ones - one borne of necessity because he was a nomad, so that part was proving fairly easy. And when it came to explaining everything, the translation was still there, so Armin could explain things however Guy needed him to and they translated - as all language did - fluently into his own language.

The thing was, this language made no sense at all, in Guy's estimation. Actually pronouncing it was difficult to start with - while he was used to guttural sounds, some of the interdental sounds like "th" were completely alien and he kept slipping into click consonants when trying to make them because that was what he was used to when making sounds with his tongue near his teeth.

And the grammar. Why. Just why.

"I know about three - maybe four - languages. It blurs a little because of some of the dialects. I can usually pick them up like that." He snapped his fingers. "And this is - this is a language that somehow seems purposefully constructed to be complicated."

It was even more difficult trying to learn all the symbols at the same time with it for all the sounds for writing. He already had the alphabet memorized but he didn't understand why there were so few letters for so many sounds. It sometimes didn't make sense either, like how "a" could have multiple sounds it represented.

"Okay, so why isn't it just the house. Because you're there. At the the house. And it's the only house around."

One thing he'd been having trouble with sometimes with possessives was the idea that an object needed a special delineation as to who it belonged to unless context required it. Apparently the translation was glossing over a linguistic tendency he had to treat immediate objects as some singular object as if no other objects like it were in existence, meaning they needed no special description or designation like one of ownership unless the ownership was relevant. For instance, a house, or "Mary's House," or a particular house of note, became "the house," as in the only house in existence. Because it was the one he was in or in front of.

"I'm still not getting why there's the special description of who it belongs to while you're dealing with it because it's - it's the house you're right in front of, right? Or in? So it's the house. Unless Mary is there with a club and she's angry because you're trying to take her house. Then you'd need to note that it's Mary's house."

[observationalhazard]

Well, everyone else in the library could deal with Hanji's enthusiasm for a little while. She leaned over Armin to peer at the map, taking in the scope and scale of the continent.

"Two thousand meters.... And none of it is walled in."

She clapped her book shut and leaned down to trace her finger along the rail line, "Think about it - this is all open. No walls, no titans... I wonder why they don't use all of it."

[clarityinchaos]

He sighed, and looked over the rest of the limited detail the map provided. "The Capitol says a war left most places other than the Districts and the Capitol an unlivable wasteland." What he'd seen looked pretty normal, but maybe there were other things to worry about than its state of vegetation. He left what he thought of the official Capitol line unsaid.

[observationalhazard]

Hanji wrinkled her nose and peered at the map with more than a little incredulity, "But there's so much space. How could it all be rendered uninhabitable? Even if you could burn everything, that wouldn't make it unlivable."