#261 words

[asheespiquantpeculiarities]

Thanks for Coming 4

It was a sofa. A nice, big sofa. With a table i-n front. And a stereo.

No monitor to be seen.

But a free space, at the very least.

They could start to unpack the food.

There were appetisers. And desserts, as already said, but also main dishes.

One.

Two.

Three.

Raph put out even more…

What was happening?

She - she – nodded at every part of food that showed up.

And, after everything was arranged in the strange wooden boxes and bowls that seemed to come with the order. The price was high enough, he supposed.

“You did order something, right?” She frowned, looking through the various little piles.

Henoch raised his lone bag: “Well, yes”

“Are you… are you sure that’s enough?” she looked almost worried.

“Are you sure you can eat all of this?” because… a lot.

She shrugged: “The change takes a bit out of you. I need to refill… why not safe time in the next days, too?”

This… this was not how it works: “I…. don’t think that’s…” judging by how thin he usually is: “… I don’t think you usually eat that much?”

She let herself fall onto the couch, the outer packaging thrown into a bin: “We’ll see, won’t we?” She said, patting the couch.

“Come on, the baby spring rolls are good!”

He… sat down.

It did smell good.

A baby roll appeared in front of his nose: “Try! I promise it’s delicious!”

After a long glance over to her, he opened his mouth.

… she did seem more… open? Now? Maybe?

[twowug]

Trekking Along With a Weird Experiment

One linguist, d'Armond Speers, decided to make an experiment out of his son and speak to him during the first years of his life using nothing but the invented Star Trek language, Klingon. Speers' goal was to see if his son Alec would adopt Klingon as a first language alongside English. Everyone else--Alec's mother (who was 100% on board with it), other family members, people at the daycare center, etc.--spoke to Alec using English.

By the time he was a toddler, Alec did understand Klingon, but he barely spoke it, preferring to use English since everyone else besides his father spoke English (and because he knew his father could speak English, too). As an adult, Alec says he does not speak Klingon at all (x).

Speers claims raising Alec this way is just as beneficial as any other bilingual upbringing. Peoples' responses are varied; some accuse Speers of child abuse, and some think more experiments like this one should be conducted.

Personally, I would have been more accepting of the experiment if Speers hadn't been using a constructed language. I know that kind of eliminates the entire point of the project, but c'mon, if you're going to subject your child to an experiment where he is unable to say whether or not he wants to participate, at least get him to learn a language that could be more useful for him.

As for the people who argue this is child abuse, I wouldn't go that far. Speers stopped the experiment as soon as his son appeared to lose interest in Klingon.