First Impressions/Foreign Tongue
Chapter 3: Smorgasboard/Sobremesa
Summary: Starfire tries it Raven's way.
Most of the time, they spoke English, of course. It was the team's lingua franca, and the language Star came to understand Earth in. Latin simply didn't have the words for skyscraper, or pizza, or chronoton detonator - though it did have the word for mustard.
Sometimes, however, the two girls still spoke to each other in Latin. They'd become very close in spite of their rocky start, and they found that having a language all to themselves was useful for secrets, and side comments, and shouting "distract him while I come up from behind!" without letting an enemy know that you planned to distract him and then come up from behind. It was also just a very logical language, and sometimes Starfire appreciated that after a long day of struggling with the inconsistencies of English.
"[Why Latin?]" Star asked one day, apropos of nothing.
"[Pardon?]"
"[You and the boys were speaking English the night we first met, and your native language is Azerathian... yet when I kissed you, the first language I found on your tongue was Latin. Why?]"
Raven was blushing. It was a very subtle blush, one that Starfire had only recently come to notice; just a faint grey-lavender dusting on her cheeks, like the shadow of a passing cloud. Starfire supposed she had embarrassed her by bringing up the kiss.
In fact, Raven was not thinking about Tamaranean lip contact at all. She was considering whether there was any way to say what she was about to say that didn't sound ridiculous. She came to the conclusion that there was not, and came out with it:
"[I was trying to guard my thoughts, just in case any of you were mind-readers,]" she said.
Starfire blinked. Then she giggled.
"Vere?" she asked in disbelief.
"[It's been known to happen.]"
"[Have you successfully confused any mind readers?]"
"[Two or three, I think,]" Raven said solemnly. "[But it's hard to know for sure.]"
"[Well, I am glad.]"
"[Because you got to] smooch [me twice?]"
The warm feeling that coursed through Starfire's expansive aura couldn't be explained by mere amusement. "[Because you speak more freely with me in Latin.]"
Well, shit. Raven hadn't expected a sincere response. She probably should have, with Starfire.
"[... I'm glad you speak Latin, too.]"
Starfire got her first exposure to the earthly way of learning languages when Cyborg asked to learn hers. It was a short-lived affair; Cyborg was jacked up on the Maximum-7 in a way that wasn't sustainable, and Starfire didn't know the most basic things about what made up a language, let alone how to teach one to somebody. In the end, Cyborg learned a couple hundred random words and phrases, and Starfire learned about the basic parts of speech - adjectives, and verbs, and word order - and they never really got to a point where they could speak the language together, but they did have fun peppering Tamaranean words into everyday conversations.
Teaching was one thing, but Starfire didn't try to learn another language the earthling-way until Mas y Menos joined the team.
Cyborg was determined to learn Spanish properly (his two years of half-forgotten high school Spanish were mierda, he said, and didn't count) and Raven—lover of language and purveyor of fine words—decided to join him.
"And this is how you learn?" Starfire asked. "From books and practice and regional cuisine?"
"And people," said Cyborg, biting into a taco.
Starfire hopped into a seat at the table "Perhaps I will try it! Conceivably, it could be fun."
"Like our old Tamaranean lessons!" Cyborg agreed. "Except this time we have textbooks to keep us from kører ikke på skinner."
Starfire giggled.
Two hours later, the three of them were still sitting around the table, with textbooks and workbooks and empty paper wrappers strewn between them, and Starfire was miserable.
"How does anyone learn anything like this?" She cried in dismay.
Raven didn't reply. She was painstakingly working her way through a book of Spanish poetry, mouthing the words as she went and stopping every two or three words to look something up in a dictionary.
"All of these irregularities and extra verb conjugations are brutal," said Cyborg, rubbing his good eye. "But you know, I feel like I actually remember more than I thought I did!"
"Deben hablar en español si quieren practicar," a voice chastised.
Starfire whipped her head around to see who had spoken. The motion caused her fiery long hair to smack Raven in the face. Cyborg snickered as Raven sputtered and tried to claw the hair out of her mouth, but Starfire didn't even notice.
Robin was in the kitchen, dressed in shorts and a sweaty tank top. He was clearly back from one of his long runs, but instead of being tired out, he only seemed more energized, the bastard. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. Then, soundlessly, he sprung up, vaulted the counter, and flipped onto the top of the fridge so fast that centripetal force kept his drink in his cup. Parkour.
"Robin!" she said in surprise. "You speak the Spanish?"
"Sí," Robin said unnecessarily, slurping his orange juice from atop the fridge.
Star practically vibrated into the airspace over the table. "Can I learn it from you?" she asked hopefully.
Raven harrumphed. "Et tu, brute?"
"What happened to learning with us!" Cyborg protested.
"Aren't you always asking how the Earth could have over 6,000 known spoken languages?" Robin said cheerfully. "I wouldn't want to get in the way of your personal discovery."
Starfire slumped back down into her seat and groaned.
Robin smiled and sipped his orange juice. And then, inexplicably, he winked. Furthermore, he appeared to have winked in Raven's general direction (though it was hard to be sure with the mask.)
¿Porque? Raven thought to herself, using her 2 hours of Spanish. She flipped back a few pages. ¿Por qué? She corrected herself. And then she answered herself: yo no sé. And then she thought, I need to learn more Spanish, cuz this is getting on my nerves.
Starfire remained slumped against the table, los dos otros returned to their work, and another 20 minutes or so passed in peace.
"Hey dudes! Are you doing something fun?"
"We're learning Spanish," Cyborg explained.
"Soooo no, then," Beast Boy answered his own question.
"It can be fun!" Cyborg protested. "You should try it sometime, broaden your mind and all that."
"Man, I bet I know more languages than you!"
"That would require you to know more than one language, BB."
"I do too know more than one! I speak English and Xhosa, plus enough Swahili, Lingala, and French to get around. That's, like, 2 and 3 half languages."
Cyborg's eyebrow shot up. If BB had claimed to speak Italian or Japanese, Cy would've called bullshit in a heartbeat. But the languages he'd just named were obscure enough that Beast Boy (who'd learned most of his social studies from movies) probably wouldn't have known they existed unless he actually spoke them. Plus, Cyborg knew that all four languages were popular in Sub-Saharan Africa (thank you 8th-grade Geo Bee) and that Mr. and Mrs. Boy had traveled around a lot, which all lent credence to Beast Boy's claim...
On the other hand, this was Beast Boy.
"Prove it," Cyborg challenged.
"Ndithe kuwe ndithetha isiXhosa," Beast Boy said in a clicking, lilting language. "Ndingazenza njani ezi zandi ukuba andisithethi isiXhosa?"
Cyborg's jaw dropped.
"Na zali kitoki makasi," Beast Boy said, switching to a different language, and looking supremely smug.
"How do you do that with your tongue?" Starfire asked in wonderment. Never, in a life that had spanned three galaxies, had she come across a language like this!
Beast Boy shrugged in poorly feigned nonchalance. "It's a skill," he bragged.
Raven could already tell where Star's head was going.
"[How often do you think he brushes his teeth?]"
Starfire shuddered and returned to her textbook.
A/N: Heyo, I'm back with another chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't speak all (counts on fingers) 9 languages that appear in this fic. I barely speak 3, maybe 4 of them. So, if you happen to speak Lingala, Xhosa, Spanish, Danish, Esperanto, Ancient Latin, or Romanian reasonably well and notice that I've made a mistake por favor, tell me!
Disclaimer 2: I don't own Teen Titans lol, ya saben