280 Yesterday Once More (1/2)

Chapter 280: Yesterday Once More

Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Richard stared angrily at the two red-headed lovebirds. It couldn’t understand why they were stupid—the words were very easy to pronounce, yet what they said was simply wrong. How could they just not get it?

Richard felt a bit of regret for taking over this task impulsively, for now Richard had found this mission was a little more difficult than it had thought. Chinese was too complicated and too difficult. It was way more difficult than learning the Indo-European Family Languages. Even if they pronounced the words in Chinese correctly, others were still unable to understand what they meant if the tone was wrong.

Segments were composed of phonemes and suprasegmental phonemes – Phonemes were made up of vowels and consonants, which determined the basic pronunciation of a word, and could be applied to most languages in this world. When it came to suprasegmental phonemes, there were voice accent, nasal, intonation, phonetic change and rhythm, and many other aspects involved, and Chinese included indefinite changes of suprasegmental phonemes, making it a language hard to comprehend thoroughly.

Little Purple and Yellow Pea Cake lowered their heads in front of Richard and stood timidly, like pupils that had made mistakes.

Seeing them like that, Richard couldn’t bear to reprimand them anymore. After all, objectively speaking, their learning speed was very fast, much faster than Richard was back in the old days.

Richard’s memory was somewhat vague when recalling the old days, which were really long ago. At that time, it had not yet become an Elf because of the Strength of Faith. It was just an ordinary African grey parrot to be sold as a pet. It was no different from any other grey parrots. If it was because of anything, it was that Richard met her.

She bought Richard from a pet shop.

Yes, a pet shop. Its destiny was always somewhat related to pet shops, thought Richard. It met her in a pet shop, and appeared in another pet shop after becoming an Elf. Although the two pet shops were half a world away, it seemed like there was some sort of magic linking them.

Richard didn’t know how she chose it among all those parrots in the pet shop—because of its breed? Size? Feather color? Or its eyes that Zhang Zian mentioned oftentimes? Unfortunately, it never got the chance to ask her, for it hadn’t learnt how to ask.

Richard had heard the word ”chemistry” for the first time from Zhang Zian. There were no exact corresponding words in English for what ”chemistry” meant in Chinese. At best, only phrases like ”the encounter of fate”, ”love at first sight, and ”fall into love” could deliver a similar meaning, yet these combinations were too superficial, and could not be as exquisite and long-lasting as the word ”chemistry” in Chinese.

Richard knew that it should not scare Little Purple and Yellow Pea Cake, but if it did not do so, birds' instinct of activeness would make them unable to concentrate—and concentration was the key to efficient learning.

Richard still remembered its tension and fear when it left the pet shop and was brought into the lab. Facing the strange woman in a white coat, Richard nervously speculated, what she was going to do? To kill it? Or to eat it? It wanted to tell her that it was not tasty, its meat was hard to chew, its feathers were hard to pull, and it had too many bones...

Although she tried hard to express her friendliness, Richard’s brain was so chaotic that it could not understand her good will. Richard just felt more afraid and did not even dare to leave the cage. Although the cage imprisoned its freedom, it was also a shelter for Richard.

What made Richard even more tense was that, there were not only it and her in the lab, but also there was another parrot—a parakeet named ”Merlin”. Though Merlin was smaller in size, it was rather hostile, staring at Richard as if it was an intruder and snatcher in its territory.