Just short of grinding his teeth, Rhys forced his jaw to relax. “I’ve done good work for Tanaka. And I’ve done it without sacrificing the cultures from which we’ve acquired resources. The company once valued that Sweetie Bracelet. I intend to do good work for Tanaka here on Fourier’s World – again, without sacrificing the natives’ interests.”
“The company is changing, ” said Darrel, “Don’t-”
Ivan Terezov came abruptly to his feet links of london sweetie bracelet. “Don’t take Darrel too seriously, professor. He enjoys challenges so much he’ll create one out of thin air. I doubt,” he continued, ignoring his associate’s glower, “that the natives’ interests are really in conflict with ours.”
Darrel subsided. “Of course not,” he said, and reseated himself links of london.
“The first thing we need to do,” Rhys said, “is establish better communications with the natives than afforded by sign language and pointing. I imagine Yoshi will be ready to help out with that. I’d best go see what she’s got for us.”
“May I tag along, professor?” asked Ivan links of london charms.
Rhys had no objection to that, though he rather suspected the gangly scientist was intended as a nanny … or a spy.
The Arkuit, as they called themselves, spoke a language that had no articles and no explicit tenses – those were implied. It also had several possessive cases. A noun could be modified by whether it belonged to “me,” to “you,” or to “us.”
There were no explicit gender pronouns either- the word for “man” (zhenshin) was the same as the word for “woman”, the difference was in inflection. The emphasis was subtly on the first syllable the subject was a woman, and on the second if it was a man. You literally said, “Man does this” or “Woman does that.” The only pronoun was a neuter term- zhin – that corresponded to the human word one.