A pair of loobies goes flying out to sea

Jenn, the correct phrase is "How now, brown cow?" and was used by people learning how to give speeches, in order to practice rounding their vowels correctly. Of course it does not date back to the eleventh century, but I suppose it could have... In Old English, it would have been, "Hu nu, brunu cu?"

And, Sydonie, I felt like I needed some humor after these last chapters. This Malcolm/Vash/Iylaine triangle is breaking my heart.

Well, Eirik couldn't have been *all* bad, since he is Sigefrith's best friend, and Sigefrith is just too nice a guy to like a total jerk.

He's a fun character to write about for sure. He's a good foil for grumpy Brede: the brother-in-law from Hell, but in a good way.

I'm fluent in French because I'm married to a Frenchman. I have decent German because I lived in Bonn for a year and a half. I studied some Old English while working on this story. Otherwise I have a certain familiarity with Scottish and Irish Gaelic and with Dutch, since at one time I was interested in studying all the languages of my ancestors. I recently learned I have some Swedish ancestors as well so I will have to look at that someday. I also made up my own elven language! I do love studying languages...

Xhosa and Zulu -- wow! Well, Afrikaans, too, but Indo-European languages have less power to amaze me. I would love to live someplace where different languages are spoken... technically it is so in Canada, but here on the West coast you hardly meet any French-speakers. It is fun to see the French and English both on product packaging though. Oooh! Does a bag of chips have labels in Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, and Zulu? That would be cool...

I know how you feel though... so many hundreds (thousands?) of languages in the world, and so little time...

I didn't notice the "South Africa all the time". I tend to be aware of that sort of difference... I dated an Iranian guy once and he was constantly having to explain that he wasn't an Arab... And I know some bits of some Afro-Asiatic languages but I wouldn't be so silly as to think it teaches me anything about Bantu languages.

French is not difficult to pronounce except for the R's. Oh the R's! The U's, too, but there's a trick you can do for the U. But I think it is easier for an English-speaker to pronounce French than a French-speaker to pronounce English. We have that accursed "th" sound.

But I would guess there are some sounds in Xhosa and/or Zulu that aren't in my repertoire at all...

I got the Afrikaans. I found with Dutch that if you know German, you know English, and you know how Dutch is pronounced so you can sound it out, you can figure out most everything you read. Understanding people when they speak is a totally different problem, however.

Ooh ooh ooh now I am intrigued about the Xhosa... I was at work yesterday so I only had the time to glance in Wiki and see they were both Bantu languages; I didn't realize there would be clicks involved! When I was studying linguistics, one of my favorite things was to take the IPA chart of phonemes and go through the chart figuring out how to pronounce sounds that did not exist in my language, by using their descriptions. But clicks were always so "out there" (so far out there they are in their separate table of non-pulmonic consonants!) would love to learn... but clicks might be something you have to learn when you're a kid.

In the US (in secondary schools, at least) Spanish has a reputation for being easier than French, but I don't know whether it's justified since I don't know Spanish. It may be simply because there's a larger Spanish-speaking population than French, making it easier to find examples in daily life.

My favorite show when I was little, Sesame Street, had bits of it in Spanish... I learned a handful of words like agua. But when we accompanied my dad on a few business trips into upstate New York, I was stunned to learn that there, in closer proximity to Quebec, they had bits in French instead. I remember as a kid that really freaked me out... you mean there's more than two languages in the world? (And look at me now...)

Now you have me all excited about African languages, as if I needed something else to take up my time. I was listening to last.fm today, and every time something African came on I had to hurry to the site to see where they were from. E.T. Mensah...no. Rokia Traoré... no. Ladysmith Black Mambazo... bingo! South Africa. So now I wonder what language they were singing. The one this morning was called "Kwathatha". I have heard them clicking before & noticed it already. I am crazy about a cappella music, and I guess there's quite a tradition of that in South Africa. Solomon Linda and the "Mbube" song too! Ooh that's a Zulu song isn't it?

I am pretty shy about talking to people, but if I lived in a country where a dozen different languages were spoken, I would probably never shut up. My poor maid would never get her work done unless she only spoke English.

OK, where do you live if "we" are in Washington, and yet most of your co-workers are speaking Tagalog? You must get around!

I'm in Washington too. My opinion on the whole Vash/Malcolm thing has been let the poor girl choose! For a long time, I thought she would choose Vash, even though she loves them both. Now she's clearly chosen Malcolm. I was horrified to learn she is bonded, even though I suspected it. I don't see how she can get out of it. If Vash dies, she dies. If she hides, Vash can find her with the lock of hair Malcolm gave him, or he can find another strand she may have left anywhere she's been. I'm hoping there is a loophole. It's quite obvious she wants to stay married to Malcolm. As much as I love Vash, and know he loves Ilaiyne, it's clear that Malcolm loves her more and knows her better. Despite Vash's elf knowledge. I'm guessing the bond has something to do with why the elves had to let her be taken, why they can't tell her much. Likely this will in some way solve the supernatural problems. I'm hoping there is a loophole so she can just be with her love Malcolm instead! He's loved her quite nearly since he met her. She came about more slowly, but it's quite clear she has chosen him over Vash. A part of me worries as Egelric that she would be happy to be with Vash - which she may have been if she had never met Malcolm.

In the US (in secondary schools, at least) Spanish has a reputation for being easier than French, but I don’t know whether it’s justified since I don’t know Spanish. It may be simply because there’s a larger Spanish-​speaking population than French, making it easier to find examples in daily life.

I don’t know French, but I would guess that Spanish may be easier for English speakers to learn as well. English is crazy with synonyms, non-​phonetic spellings, and lack of rules. Although Spanish has different grammatical rules and maybe 2 unfamiliar sounds (only one of which is probably a forgeign phoneme) it’s nearly entirely phonetic, is much clearer, and has very few synonyms overall. I would imagine French as another Romance Language has similar differences in grammatical rules, but also has spellings that seem so very much less phonetic to English speakers. Plus fewer native speakers around.

Funnily, I once asked my sister-​in-​law who’s American but speaks Portugese to have a conversation with me, and it was the weirdest experience – none of the words made sense, but I understood everything she said! My Spanish is seriously lapsing from lack of use, and I can’t say I ever got to full fluency. I don’t have a gift for languages, but I’m determined to get Spanish down (heritage, for work, to teach hypothetical offspring). If I ever actually master that, I plan to learn Yoeme, the Uto-​Aztecan language of the tribe my father is descended from.