Chapter 37: The Start of my Journey (3)
In order to live up to the name of the dragon princess as quickly as possible, I began to diligently study the dragon race’s language. Unfortunately, after only ten minutes I began to regret that decision.
The way Professor Flint taught the Dragon Language was basically for him to write down all the most basic characters on a blackboard and explain their meanings one by one.
Then he made me go over them a dozen times to memorize all the characters.
It brought back the pain I suffered while learning languages in my past life. Even more so in this case, after all, the difficulty of learning a language from scratch and learning one based on your understanding of your native tongue are on two completely different levels.
Having the foundation of my original world’s language coupled with the language of this world instilled in my mind from those two goddesses, the difficulty of learning the Dragon Language was exponentially greater.
Studying the language this way is so tiring that even just a ten minute period was tough for me to survive. My heart hurt as if it was scratched by a cat, I can’t wait to take a break for two or three years before resuming the lesson.
Well... the real reason is, that it is super boring.
“That... teacher, can’t you make the lesson more interesting?” I’ve always been a good student who pays attention and asks questions.
“More... interesting?” Professor Flint’s hands were shaking and he nearly dropped the pointer. Trembling, he responded while pushing up glasses on his nose, “I have been studying the language for a long time and I have never once heard of making the lessons ‘interesting’.”
“Don’t you know that this force-feeding style of teaching only makes a student lose interest in the lessons, thus reducing my efficiency in grasping the information. Moreover, such a hypnotic course will only serve its purpose of making me fall asleep during classes. I ask this of you, if I were to fall asleep in class, would you dare try to rouse me? No, right? As a consequence of that, I can’t even learn the Dragon Language, can you handle the burden of that pot?” My eyes opened and my righteous words pointed out the flaws in his old-fashioned ideas.
Professor Flint took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe his sweat, he almost dropped the handkerchief due to his trembling hands, “That... your royal highness, how should I teach you then?”
“Hmm, there is an extraordinary number of interesting teaching styles that you can employ. For example, you could try to integrate Dragon Language into tongue twisters, folklore, or music.”
“That won’t do huh... um... how about crosstalk1 then,” Professor Flint’s expression became more and more ugly the longer I spoke, but I’m not the kind of princess who would go out of her way to make things difficult for him. Since I felt a little sorry for him, I decided to lower the difficulty.
However, after hearing the idea of crosstalk, his face turned green as if he’d just eaten ten pounds of cauliflower.
“Hey~ by the way, what is crosstalk anyway?” A sensible dragon finally spoke up and asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“A crosstalk...” I slowly stood up and looked around.
“I- is crosstalk a very powerful skill?” asked a dragon with a trembling voice.
“If the Royal Princess puts on that kind of face, it must be so,” the other dragons affirmed as a group.
I stood before them with the solemn presence of a person speaking before hundreds of thousands of people at Tiananmen Square, “is a way to get people to laugh with tongue twisters, stories, and songs.”
“.........”
The air suddenly turned strangely quiet.
Even Professor Flint was so shocked by my stunning majesty that he stopped shaking.
After that, he suddenly fell to the ground weeping bitter tears after having experienced the sincerity behind my knowledgeable and experienced words. “Crown Princess, that’s utterly impossible.”
He sounded like that one irrelevant guy in ancient dramas who always only says things like, “this lowly servant is not capable of such feat!”
“Forget it,” I sighed and kindly spared the poor old man, “since you can’t do it, let’s just proceed as before.”
Professor Flint once again showed gratitude towards my benevolence, shouting, “thank you, Princess, thank you, Princess,” as he kowtowed.
“Wait a minute,” I called out to Professor Flint as he stood up unsteadily with the pointer and preparing to continue the class.
The professor suddenly stopped and then stiffly turned his body towards me while forcing out a daisy-like smile, “Do you have another command for me, Princess?”
“I say... isn’t time for today’s class over now?”
A witty, fast-paced dialogue, especially in a play, comic act, etc.; repartee.