Old Time Tea. Too bad — the protest had little effect.
Old Time Tea acted like nothing had happened and drank its tea quietly.
For the second time, Richard understood the fact that it was at the lowest level of the food chain of this pet shop, but luckily Zhang Zian was also at the bottom with it.
"You can also speak Japanese?" Richard’s Japanese accent sounded authentic, so Zhang Zian asked curiously.
"Of course, Japanese is not a complicated language." Richard was still frightened, and its reaction was a little bit slow, "Why are you asking?"
"You know..." Zhang Zian winked and made signs towards it.
"Just watch your Japanese adult videos — what do you need translation for?"
Zhang Zian hastily pinched its beak again, "Don't say it out loud in public..."
Richard made some muffled sounds, and Zhang Zian released his hand.
"Pooh, pooh," Richard complained grouchily. "Wow, so you know it’s inappropriate..."
Zhang Zian looked around and saw that Fina and Snowy Lionet were staring at him with ooks mixed with disdain, disgust and despise. Old Time Tea turned up the volume of the TV and pretended it didn't hear them. Galaxy was playing hide and seek carefreely and chasing the American Shorthair.
Zhang Zian looked at Richard seriously, "Let’s just get back to business. How do you want me to help?"
Richard thought and said, "Do you know what ‘decoding’ is?"
Zhang Zian thought he for sure wasn’t a dementia patient, so how could he not know that? So he answered right away, "Did you just say D-E-C-O-D-I-N-G, decoding?"
"Yes, but decoding is the professional term of the computer and electronic communication field, and there is a counterpart theory in linguistics," said Richard, all high and mighty. "The nature of daily communication, whether it be in the human or animal world, is the delivery of information, which is accomplished through languages. People use multiple linguistic means to encode, send, receive and decode information, so as to reach the goal of delivering information. Such linguistic means include, but are not limited to, voices, characters, gestures, images, and computer codes. Even for me, it's impossible to know all the linguistic means."
Richard paused, hopped to the water bowl, drank some water to wet its throat, and then continued, "I need to teach these stupid parrots to speak. And speaking is ‘spoken language’, which totally depends on voices to deliver information. It involves another professional term—segment. When we talk about ‘segments’, we are mostly talking about the languages in the Indo-European Language Family. ‘Segment’ is also applicable to the Sino-Tibetan Language Family, but that’s more complicated. Do you know the Big Four Language Families?"
"No, I don’t."
"Forget it. What an ignorant moron." Richard sighed, "Leave these details aside, just listen to me carefully."
Zhang Zian focused like he was preparing for the college entrance exam. He opened his eyes wide and listened carefully, trying hard to digest this knowledge—perhaps he could show off with it to look smart someday.
"Segment in linguistics is the counterpart to code in computer and electronic communication. Code is the basic meaningful unit in computer language, while segment is the basic unit in linguistics." Richard got back to the business, "Decoding and encoding in computer language, when it comes to linguistics, the corresponding expression becomes the dividing and recombining of segments. Can you understand that?"
"No, I don't." Zhang Zian answered honestly. He was completely dumb.
Richard had grown used to his stupidity and explained further, "If you master the skills to divide and recombine segments, you can extrapolate many words from one. For example, if you truly understand the words ‘grey parrot’ and ‘green’, you can coin a new word like ‘green parrot’. This is the fundamental distinction between ‘repeating the words of others like a parrot’ and true speaking."
Richard looked at Zhang Zian haughtily and seriously, "And what I am going to teach them is true speaking."
"Grey! Grey!" As if attesting for Richard, the red-headed lovebirds almost shouted at the same time.
Chapter end
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