#the name reading where you just know all the latin american names are mispronounced

[wild-at-mind]

Also now I'm feeling really shit about not getting to anything for trans day of remembrance this year.

[sanityshorror]

Ej Teaching Ben Russian-?

"Quiet-Toe" or The One Where Ben Can't Speak Russian

Based off my HC that Jack is Russian and Ben is a dumb blonde

--

"Ben, I swear, it's really not that hard - if you would just pay attention--" Jack said for the 10th time, completely exasperated.

"I can't even read those hyroglifics!" Ben protested, shoving away the piece of paper and pencil that Jack had placed in front of him.

"Cyrillic, Ben, it's cyrillic," Jack corrected.

Ben threw his hands in the air, genuinely confused, "I thought you said you were teaching me Russian! Pick one, Russian or," badly mispronouncing, "s-rall-ic!"

"Russian is written in the cyrillic alphabet…" Jack buried his face in his hands, rubbing his temples. He'd lost count of how many times he had repeated that to Ben.

"Pft, why would you write a language in a different language? That would be like writing English in Latin," Ben snickered to himself.

Liu looked up from the chair he was curled up in, blinking at Ben in disbelief. "Ben… You know that... English is written in the Latin alphabet… Right…?"

"Wait, what?! Since when?!" the shock in Ben's voice was all too real, making both Jack and Liu shudder.

With a heavy sigh, Jack mumbled, "since always... anyway… Let's get back to Russian…." and shoved the pencil and paper back towards Ben.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Ben grumbled, reluctantly picking up the pencil and looking at the alphabet written in the paper, face slightly brightening up, "hey, I know that one!" he cheerfully exclaimed pointing to the 'А,а' written on the paper.

"Yes, but it's pronounced 'ah,' like a soft A," Jack explained with a small smile.

"Now what's this weird 'B' next to the normal 'B'?" Ben asked, furrowing his eyebrows as he pointed to the letters 'Б,б' and 'В, в.'

Patient as ever, Jack explained, "Б is a B, the 'normal B'," he pointed to the 'В, в', "is a V."

Making an odd, confused noise, Ben questioned, "well, now why the hell would you do that and just turn B into a V?!"

"...it's not…" Jack signed yet again, "ya know what, never mind. Let's just move on to a few words and phrases."

Ben grinned gleefully, proudly blurting out, "SOOKA BLAYT!"

"Oh wow...you know сука блядь…" Jack mumbled, unamused, "...like every american…" his voice dripped with sarcasm, "how impressive. Do you know да, too?"

"Da…? Da what..? Da doritos..?" Ben eyed his half empty bag of doritos.

"Нет."

"Nyet? What about a net?"

Starting to get a headache, Liu cleared his throat, "Da means yes and nyet means no."

Jack gave Liu a warm and thankful smile before looking back at a very, very baffled Ben.

"WAIT- how does Liu know Russian?!" Ben squwaked, much louder than needed.

"Jack taught me," Liu answered bluntly, returning to reading his book.

"Say whaaaaaa?!" Ben's eyes widened.

" Что."

"What's a 'sh-toe'?"

"You asked me to say 'what,' in Russian, it's ch'to," Jack explained, still patient as all hell.

"Sh-toe," Ben mispronounced, "like telling my toe to be quiet…."

"No, not like telling your toe to be quiet. How about I teach you to 'hi, how are you?' and introduce yourself?" Jack suggested.

"Okay, tell me."

"Привет, как дела? Как тебя зовут? Я Бен," Jack said slowly.

"Quiet-toe?" Ben snickered at his terrible attempt at a joke.

"Hi, how are you? What's your name? I'm Ben," Jack translated. "It's really… Really… beyond basic…" he tried not to think about the migraine it would cause him teaching Ben word cases.

Ben snickered immaturely, incorrectly repeating, "private cock deli? So weird…"

Jack's response came in the form of another face palm and mumbling, "мне нужна водка…"

(I need vodka.)

[clenastia]

Discord Prompt #3! Write an all-dialogue story, but with only one character speaking! The other character’s questions should be inferred from your character’s answers!

...this fuckin sucked.

Did not like.

There was also a random generator to decide our character’s race/sexuality/etc and I got Israeli/lesbian and I’m like. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Everything I know about Israel I know from bible study as a child, so it’s like, 2000 years out of date and functionally useless.

And I really did NOT want to spend ages googling for this prompt to try and learn the quick and dirty of a whole different culture.

So I just-

Tried to dodge most of the questions lol.

Apparently we’ll be using these characters in next week’s prompt too, so THAT’LL be fun. Hopefully I’ll be more in the mood to actually look up stuff by then.

“Oh you don’t have to worry about that - my parents may have followed their God, but I don’t really care. But I don’t like meat anyway- yes, a salad will do.”

…

“Right, I suppose we have to get started then? I’m Beyle De Vitis, but please, call me Berry-

“What? Oh, that. Well my father, may he rest in peace, had to move to England for work, and then ended up having to stay longer than expected, so we moved out with him for a couple years - the other kids kept mispronouncing my name, and eventually it just stuck. I really don’t mind though, I’ve always found it rather cute.”

“Anyway, where were we? I think I was introducing myself: I was born in April of 1996, in Israel. I- yeah, I think that’s Taurus, but I’ve never been much for those astrology things - yeah, the 21st.”

*sigh*

“Right. My family was pretty well-off, I think. My dad wasn’t home much when I was younger, his job only settled down later on, sometimes we’d travel with him, though most of the time we couldn’t. Mom didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t busy! School and all, you know. And she loved to volunteer, so there were always places to be…

“I guess that’s how I fell in love with languages though. Especially when I was really little, when we went with my dad and I heard all those people speaking so many different languages, I just wanted to know them all. And I’ve finally got my degree!”

“No, I don’t really- it’s- I do freelance work, mostly. Just not good at sticking to any one job, y’know? I get too antsy, always want to move on to new things.”

“My family? I visit occasionally. My younger brothers still live at home- yeah, the twins. I think they don’t want to leave Mom alone, especially now that Dad’s gone, but I just couldn’t stay, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess you do. Heh, who’d have thought. Nah, I don’t have anyone in my life. Not too good at, how should I put it, going steady? My last girlfriend broke up with me after- I wouldn’t call it cheating, really, it’s not like I had sex with Myra, but I guess it’s true I wanted to. I’ve given up on the whole relationship thing. I guess it sounds bad, but I just get bored with people, you know?”

“Heh. Guess not.”

“Why are- are you reading a sheet? Why are you asking about my appearance, you’re literally looking at me. Should I become some dramatic heroine in a story, ranting about how plain I am while every reader in the world face-palms at my self-deprecating behaviour?

“Yeah I thought so.”

“The scar? Oh, it doesn’t really have any dramatic story. I got into my dad’s fishing supplies once, and tried to use it unsupervised - got the fishhook caught right in my eyebrow, honestly I’m lucky it didn’t go through my eye. I panicked and ripped it out, so the damage was pretty bad and it left a mark. Hurt like a bitch too, I couldn’t even look at a fishing pole without freaking out over it for years.”

“Stuff I like to do? Learn languages, obviously! I speak six fluently, and a few more casually. No, I never got my IQ tested. I don’t really need to? I just like learning languages, and lucky for me there’s all sorts of jobs for that! I’m thinking of brushing up my Hindu next, maybe Greek after that.

“Well I already speak English, I don’t really need any other European languages. You can get through pretty much all of Europe with a bit of English, and I know passing phrases if I need one. After Greek I think I want to learn a couple Chinese dialects. China’s very big, and it’d be a blast to just spend a year or two in the country, learning all the different language variations and exploring, don’t you think?”

“Well, I guess I just think it’s fascinating, dialects. The way a single language can change into so many different forms - I know Europe’s a bit like that, with Latin, and all, though it’s a bit more drastic over there. I’m sure one day I’ll learn all those languages too - it may be a bit unrealistic, learning every single language, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try! My child’s self would never forgive me otherwise.”

“Politics? Well- I don’t really like discussing it. As a translator, my job is to try and understand, right? You can’t just translate words, you have to sometimes translate cultures, make sure the people you’re translating for understand where others are coming from- it makes it kind of hard, expressing your own political views. I always have to try and look at it from a cultural perspective and- ugh. I don’t really know what I’m saying here. But I guess I can try to answer the easy stuff.”

“Well- I mean, I don’t like people dying? I guess that’s an obvious thing to say, but I mean- stuff like the death penalty, stuff like that. Ugh. You know what, let’s just change the subject.”

“What do you mean you’re out of questions? You seriously were going down a list! Come on, can’t you do a bit better?”

“Look, if your entire list revolves around someone describing themselves and their political views, you have to admit, it’s a pretty bad list. No one wants to feel like an idiot going on about their appearance, or kicking up arguments with their politics - well. I mean, I guess some people do, but I’m certainly not one of them.”

“Ah. Was that a bit rude? Sorry. I mean, it’s still a bad list but I’m sure you did your best. Oh- ugh. Here, I’ll- y’know, just to cheer you up. Don’t look so despondent.”

“My favorite color’s blue. But like, dark blue- I know these questions aren’t on your list, but they’re better than the ones on your list, admit it! My favorite planet is Neptune-

“Well- you know, those pictures in like, some of those old textbooks? I just thought Neptune was cute. It’s- oh stop laughing at me!

“ANYWAY. My favorite food’s stir-fry- obviously I mean vegetable stir-fry, didn’t we already talk about the meat thing?”

“Favorite animal? See, you don’t need a list, just make stuff up, that’s the spirit! I don’t really have a favorite animal, but if I had to pick, maybe a panda. They just look so cuddly!”

“My favorite book is All. The. Books.”

“Please. I translate for a living. Give me anything with words on it, I promise you I’m in love. What- no. We’re not talking about Twilight. Ugh, look- English isn’t even my third language, and I read those books when I was still learning. I would like to continue to pretend that I only thought it was bad due to my own poor understanding of the language, because-

“Look, I know there are worse books out there but-

“Ugh. I’m just not much for vampire stories even on a good day. Not really my style, you know?”

“Well, Tolkien, obviously. He invented his own languages for those books - I am absolutely fluent in Sindarin.”

“Klingon? Eh, a little. American television’s always been a little strange to me, but maybe one day I’ll sit down and give it a proper study.”

“Huh. Yeah, sorry, that’s my brother- I have to take this-

“Sorry! Thanks for the interview! Uh- and sorry for making fun of your questions!”

*door slams*