Zero to Hero

1. Wa, ka, and desu

We sat in the girl’s garage, which she used as a storeroom. On my arrival, I’d banged my head against a shelf, dislodging oddly shaped scrap and bits of junk.

The girl looked at me with concern. "Daijoubu desu ka."

I scratched the metal collar around my neck. Since she’d fastened it there, the sounds she made were distinguishable, even if their meanings were an enigma.

Yet, trying to speak my own language yielded that same garbled white noise as before.

The girl rapidly fired off several more sentences.

"Doko ga itai desu ka."

"Anata wa tabibito san desu ka."

"Doko ni ikitai desu ka."

"Atashi wa tetsudai shimasu ka."

She looked at me expectantly, frowned when I shook my head. Then she pointed at a small cylinder on the floor near me. "Sore wa anata no mono desu ka."

Unsure of how else to answer, I shrugged.

The girl leaned over me to pick up the cylinder. Something soft brushed against my legs.

The cylinder happened to be a scroll. I couldn’t understand the complex shapes written on it, but the girl apparently did. She finished reading and exclaimed, "Naruhodo! Kiokusoushitsu desu ne. Rakkii. Morumotto san ga hoshikatta desu." The scroll disappeared somewhere amazing, and she got to her feet. "Kochi kite kudasai," she said, pulling me toward the door.

We relocated to a room that would be at home in my world, filled with familiar furniture and gadgets.

"Koko wa ribingu desu," said the girl taking in the whole room.

A lightbulb exploded, blinding my mind’s eye!

I rubbed at the collar. Was it a magic item? In my last life, my memory had been a sieve. With this collar on, I could recall much of what the girl said, and had become aware of a pattern across several sentences:

"Daijoubu desu ka"

"Doko ga itai desu ka"

"Anata wa tabibito san desu ka"

"Doko ni ikitai desu ka"

"Sore wa anata no mono desu ka"

"Koko wa ribingu desu"

The word desu was in each of these, ka in all but one, and wa in half the sentences. The last one also contained ribingu, which sounded like living in my language. From the looks of the room we were in, it was very much what I’d call a ‘living room’.

When she said, "Koko wa ribingu desu," I had the distinct impression she’d told me, "This is my living room".

She spoke with distinct pauses. I used those to identify individual words, which gave me four—one I was sure I knew:

My expected English sentence had five words. This wouldn’t be a direct one-to-one translation. The question was which part of the English sentence was implied or which of the foreign words pulled the weight of two English words?

How about:

I shook my head. First, no verb. If this was a full sentence, it needed a verb, right? Second, unless the girl was a room groupie, desu didn’t fit my assigned definition based on frequency of use. I tried again:

Before I could further my analysis, the girl waved her hand right in front of my face. Close enough I could feel a cool breeze on my nose. "Ano… Kiiteimasu ka. Hontou ni daijoubu desu ka."

This was directed right at me.

Which meant, I could discard the notion of desu being equivalent to my. A single word meaning both me and you as individual entities would be a ridiculous contextual nightmare!

Plus, that ka again, and I think I detected a rising tone. What if this was how people here asked a question? Did ka act as a verbal question mark?

Pin pon!

The words vibrated in my head.

Had I got something right?

Recalling the sentence that had started this train of thought, I added ka to the end and said what I thought meant "Is this the living room?"

"Koko wa ribingu desu ka?"

The girl’s eyes lit up.

"Hai! Ribingu desu."

With renewed energy, she pointed at a familiar shape. Thin and rectangular, its front surface matte black.

"Kore wa terebi desu."

Another helpful sounding word! Very much like the first part of television.

All right! I felt certain she had told me, "This is a television."

I got to work:

Feeling that koko and kore had similar meanings, I treated them as one word for simplicity’s sake.

Wa still bothered me… Come to think of it, I’d been assuming that the word order of this language, in particular verb placement, had to match that of mine. What if it didn’t?

If I assigned desu as the verb…

Adding ka at the end changed a statement into a question, right?

Certain this was correct, I wandered over to the low table in front of the couch, picked up what looked like a magazine and asked, "Kore wa terebi desu ka?"

The girl laughed and hopped about clapping her hands. Her delight distracted me for… reasons.

Settling down, she said:

"Iie, sore wa terebi de wa arimasen. Sore wa zasshi desu."

Pachi pachi pachi! Taihen yoku dekimashita!

As the words resonated in my head, I felt immensely proud. I’d taken the first step to understanding a new language; I’d asked a silly question and got the (silly) answer I expected. With this, fatigue washed over me.

The girl grabbed my hand and led me to a room with a thin mattress on the floor.

"Koko wa anata no nebeya desu. Oyasuminasai. Tsudzuki wa ashita desu ne."