Amara and Meggan, Library Tales (Backdated to Monday)

[x-meggan.livejournal.com]

Amara and Meggan are in the library, and discuss Amara’s study woes and Meggan’s researching of random moose facts.



Rather than inflict her mess on Yvette for the evening, Amara had taken refuge in the library, taking over one of the large tables with her notes for the test she was studying for. Pages and flashcards with Spanish vocabulary and grammar were spread across the table, with Amara tapping her pen on the desk as she worked on memorising verb conjugation. She didn't quite realise she was talking out loud, murmuring the different forms under her breath as she committed them to memory.

Meggan had ventured into the library earlier, suddenly wanting to learn a little bit more about things like moose habits, and had ended up settled down in one of the smaller tables. She had been surprised to find four that discussed various things, one of which wasn’t needed after all since it primarily discussed the mating cycle. She didn’t want to know that, so she pushed that one aside. A few moments passed before she blinked and looked up when she realized that sound she heard was murmuring. She looked over her shoulder, and asked, “Everything okay?” Once she saw the flashcards, she hurriedly added, “Oh, sorry for interrupting.”

Amara blinked a couple of times when she looked up, before smiling at Meggan. "It's fine, I honestly could probably use the interruption." She paused the pen tapping, looking worried for a moment. "I wasn't disturbing you, was I? I tend to get pretty caught up with my studying sometimes."

Meggan shook her head with a small, hopefully reassuring smile. She hadn’t really noticed the pen tapping until then, anyway. “No. You weren’t disturbing me at all, don’t worry about it.” She had only been writing little notes on moose stuff she found that she or Molly might want to know. Not actually studying, so it wasn’t any sort of bother to her. Even if she did have her books within arm's reach, in case she needed to look through anything. "What class was it for?"

"Spanish," she said with a sigh. "I've got a test coming up, and I'm struggling with some of it. I keep getting it mixed up with Portuguese, and let me tell you, it's not as similar as you would think. At least Brazilian Portuguese isn't, which is what I know, so it all gets very confusing at times." She shrugged a little sheepishly. "But I suppose that's what I get for studying a similar language to what I already know, rather than trying something completely different."

Meggan could see where that would be really bad, if you started using the wrong language of the two in a test. “You couldn’t have known it would be tough to separate one from the other until you got in the class,” she pointed out. She didn’t know too much about the languages involved, so she wasn’t going to judge. “It’s not your fault.” She glanced at the flashcards for a moment, and tried to think of another option. “If flashcards don’t end up working for you…would listening to a recording work instead? Or is it the spelling differences, too?”

"Hrmmm, that's not a bad idea," Amara replied thoughtfully. "There are spelling differences, but having the different sounds etched in my brain would definitely help me remember them." She grinned at Meggan. "Thanks, that's a great idea."

“You’re welcome. Glad it helped you,” Meggan responded with a small smile. “There’s bound to be a recording somewhere to help you with both things at once, I’d think.” Of course, the main thing was getting them untangled in Amara’s head, so the spelling part wasn’t really a huge issue at that second.

"Probably! And Angelo speaks Spanish, I'm sure I can bother him in regards to practice as well." That was a load off Amara's mind. Or at least some sort of end in sight for her difficulties. "But enough about my study woes. How have you been?"

“There you go, that’ll work!” That was an even better idea, since having Angelo saying the words in person might be better than a recording saying it...because you could actually ask a person questions. “Oh, I’ve been doing good,” Meggan answered. “What about you? Other than your study woe,” she quickly amended.

"Oh, the usual," Amara replied cheerfully. "Doing too much, and then as soon as I try to cut back, something else comes up. I'm looking forward to summer, I think I may be able to catch up on my sleep." She nodded at Meggan's notes. "Anything interesting there? Or just homework."

Meggan could sympathize with that notion. She shook her head at the question. “No, I finished my homework a little while ago,” she laughed. “This is just moose stuff that I found. For Molly. I wanted to dig through, and see if there was anything either of us hadn’t been told, that we might need to know.” She was slightly surprised there wasn’t some animal expert type of person that had written a huge tome of unending facts on the subject. Just several smaller books for her to peruse. There weren't any big revelations, just a lot of tiny things.

Amara blinked for a moment in confusion, then smiled. "Oh that's right, we have a moose now." She'd missed the fuss on the journals about it, instead catching sight of it when she'd been out with the horses. "Find anything useful? I can't imagine there would be many books on how to take care of one."

“You're right, there's not. I only found a little bit in this one,” Meggan confirmed. “It’s more pages about the boy moose, so far, and how big their antlers get. What their normal temperature is.” She had made a few notes of how a moose acted if anything was really wrong with them, even if that section hadn’t been more than a page or two in one book. She would be afraid Daisy would bite right through a thermometer if anyone tried to check that. Not good. “And...when it starts to get warmer, Daisy might not be too happy. It doesn’t say it’ll hurt her, just annoy her…but that looks like it means in the wild.”

Amara nodded. "New York doesn't really have the same climate as Canada, I wouldn't have thought. It can get surprisingly warm here in the summer." Which Amara mostly knew from the complaints of her friends, rather than experiencing it herself. "Perhaps Bobby could be convinced to help out, if - she? got too uncomfortable." Though that wasn't exactly a good permanent measure. Or even a good temporary one.

“Oh, that would be a million times better than sticking a little fan in there for her,” Meggan enthused. There would be no need for a terribly long extension cord. “Maybe he could stick a small ice chunk somewhere near her if it gets really warm, like a few feet outside her stall? But not too close to the horses? They probably wouldn’t like it.” Large enough that it would take more than a few minutes to melt, but not so large that it would cause frostbite to the animal in the middle of the summer. “In this book, it says it depends on the type of moose—so she’ll either just be grouchy when it's warmer or she’ll be uncomfortable. If it looks like she’s uncomfortable, I’ll ask him,” she explained.

Amara nodded. "It's probably worth checking what sort of moose it is, so you can be prepared for that. And the horses might not mind a little extra cooling in summer - they're better at coping with it than a moose, I imagine, but who doesn't like cooling down when it's hot?" Well, Amara didn't, but she was a special case.

“Good idea. I know Wade found her when he was in Canada,” Meggan explained. “It sort of all depends on if it’s Eastern or Western Canada that she’s from, though, so I’ll ask him next time I see him.” One small area made all the difference for whether they would just have to be prepared for a moose with a short fuse for several days until she adjusted, or be ready with something cold. If it was an angry moose, she would be more careful than usual around Daisy, so she wouldn’t be gnawed on when she went to give her a treat.

Comments

[x-skin.livejournal.com]

Angelo would be happy to help but notes that copying his accent might get her laughed at by actual Spanish people.

[xp_daytripper]

Ditto Amanda - hers is a combination of Manuel's Castillian Spanish and Angelo's, which is _really_ weird. ;)

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

However, in America, most Spanish language students are taught Central/South American Spanish because there's more people who speak that than European Spanish. There are grammar differences on top of accent differences. C/S.American Spanish eliminates an entire verb conjugation. But in beginning Spanish they don't really get into accents - just pronunciation. We talked about the Castillian lisp in class, but we're expected to sound like Americans trying to learn Spanish. So Amara is more likely to have Angelo's style of Spanish rather than Manuel's.

and thank god too, the lisp is ridiculous.

This educational message brought to you by "Doing my spanish homework right the hell now" and the letters ll and rr.

[x-volcanic.livejournal.com]

The accent is the least of her problems. It's remembering the differences between Spanish and Portuguese that is her main problem. *grins* So people drilling her on Spanish things would be useful.

[x-volcanic.livejournal.com]

Amara has the advantage of already having an accent herself - it's not really pronounced, but given that she's fluent in Portuguese, I presume she'd be more familiar with the right sort of sounds than the average American student would be.

Though now that you've mentioned the differences between South American Spanish and homeland Spanish, I know Brazilian Portuguese is different to the original language, but I wonder what similarities (if any) there are in the development of the languages in South America, and if they're still mutually intelligible.

[x-volcanic.livejournal.com]

Amara is happy to accept any help available. :D