Nicholas van Rijn simultaneously learns two alien languages, his captors' language, which he pretends to speak very badly, and a captive Diomedean interpreter's language while concealing from his captors that he is learning the latter. Successfully feigning ignorance and naivety, he makes a show of declining a noun to ensure that he has the meaning right although I do not think that he can have learned to recite declensions because he is learning the languages conversationally. Long before his employee, Eric Wace, van Rijn has discerned tension between two factions among his captors. Making a great public show of being afraid and confused, he foments civil war merely to cover the escape of the interpreter with whom he has conspired. The interpreter will then bring others to rescue van Rijn and his companions.
Is all this humanly possible?
2 comments:
Sure. I've known people who can learn languages very quickly; mnemonic training would increase the speed, but it's a natural knack. I suspect it involves maintaining early childhood traits -- most people lose the capacity, but children can learn two languages simultaneously, and find keeping them separate fairly simple.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
In other words Nicholas van Rijn KEPT this ability of many children to learn multiple languages quickly and simultaneously. Perhaps assisted by the methods worked out by the Polesotechnic League for learning non human languages quickly.
And, this is supported by what we see centuries later in THE REBEL WORLDS where we see Dominic Flandry learning one of the Didonian languages with surprising speed. Because of learning at the Intelligence Academy how to learn quickly.
Sean
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