Early in the morning, Zhang Zian opened his eyes and glanced around the bedroom as usual. The elfins were all sleeping, so he turned over and planned to sleep for a while. It was too early, and it was too dark and cold outside. The wind was blowing strongly.
However, after lying down for a while, he was not sleepy at all. He felt that something was wrong. After thinking about it carefully, he did not see Pi.
He propped up his upper body from the bed and looked carefully with Famous's small night light. The chair that was temporarily used as Pi's bed was empty. Pi was nowhere to be found.
Did it go to the toilet?
Zhang Zian turned his head and looked. There was no light coming from under the toilet door, so it should not be in the toilet … He patted his head. Pi was a daydreaming elfin. Why would it go to the toilet? It must be muddled from sleep!
Da da da!
There was a slight typing sound coming from the living room. Zhang Zian put on his coat and walked around Famous, who was kicking its legs in its sleep. He quietly walked over and saw Pi's back.
It was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. The light from the laptop screen outlined its furry silhouette. The nameless book was next to the computer.
Pi was relatively short. If it sat on the sofa and used the computer for a long time, it would be very uncomfortable, so it simply sat cross-legged on the floor. Fortunately, there was a carpet around the coffee table, so it was not too cold.
A new Word document was opened on the computer. Rows and rows of densely packed numbers were arranged. Needless to say, it was still Pi. There were some meaningless English letters mixed in. Perhaps he was practicing his typing.
The pince-nez was on the bridge of its nose, and the thin glasses reflected the light from the screen. From the side, the glasses seemed to have no prescription. There were no circles on the glasses.
Pi typed very slowly. Sometimes it forgot the position of a certain key, and its fingers hung over the keyboard for a long time. Even so, it did not use two fingers for convenience.
In order not to disturb the other elfins' sleep, it deliberately made its movements very light.
Hearing Zhang Zian's footsteps, it turned back and grinned at him silently.
Zhang Zian pointed to the desk, picked up the laptop, and put it on the desk. He adjusted the height of the swivel chair to the highest, put a cushion on it, and let Pi sit in the swivel chair. Then he moved a chair and sat next to it.
The height was just right, and Pi sat comfortably.
It pointed at the screen and typed in English, "I want to learn Chinese."
This line of English was still mixed in with a string of numbers, but compared to the time in the library, the numbers were much fewer. Although it was still awkward to read, at least it was not so tiring to read.
Learn Chinese?
Zhang Zian was stunned. He stretched out his arm and typed back in English: Why?
Pi obviously wanted to learn to type in Chinese, which was much more difficult than speaking and listening. For foreigners, it was too difficult to switch from the Indo-European alphabet to the Sino-Tibetan hieroglyphics.
Pi typed on the screen, "Because it's all Chinese."
It pointed at the various function buttons on Word, then pointed at the various books on the desk. Whether it was the text on the buttons or the spines of the books, they were all in Chinese, with only a few in English.
If Pi wanted to live in the pet shop for a long time, and if it wanted to live in China for a long time, it would have to face a lot of difficulties and inconveniences if it didn't know Chinese at all.
Zhang Zian nodded and typed: I understand. How do you plan to learn? Can I teach you your book?
Pi shook its head and typed: There is no Chinese in the book.
Zhang Zian thought that the book was all-inclusive and should have everything, so he was quite surprised to hear this.
Seeing that Zhang Zian was confused, Pi typed again: There is knowledge in the book.
Oh, he finally knew some inside information about the book. It was a book about life, the universe, and everything. However, it was probably written in English, and there was no Chinese in it. Of course, he couldn't use the book to learn Chinese.
Zhang Zian thought for a while and typed: You don't know Chinese, but can you understand what I say?
Pi replied: I know Pinyin, so I can understand.
What the hell? There is Pinyin in the book, but no Chinese characters?
Zhang Zian encouraged: If you know Pinyin, you will learn Chinese faster. I will help you.
Pi beamed and typed again, "Thank you." The book teaches how to learn Chinese faster.
Next, Zhang Zian found a lot of free tutorials on Chinese teaching online and asked Pi to learn from the videos.
Pi was very focused on learning, staring at the screen without blinking. It sat in front of the computer for a few hours, often reading the untitled book according to the video. It would only stand up when Zhang Zian urged it to stand up and move around.
Zhang Zian finished his work in the store, played hide-and-seek with Xinghai, and took Zhan Tian and Famous to the green field to complete their training. He spent the rest of his time with Pi, providing as much help as he could, such as helping it choose a convenient and easy to use Chinese input method.
Maybe it was because it knew Pinyin, or the learning method in the untitled book was miraculous, or the current Chinese input method was so smart that it could accurately type out a sentence by typing the first letter of each word. Or maybe it was because it was an elfin born from the Strength of Faith, so it couldn't be judged by common sense. Anyway, Pi learned Chinese very quickly and made rapid progress. In just one day, it could type some simple Chinese sentences, and by the second day, it could express its thoughts in Chinese. Although there were a lot of numbers and typos, and some grammar errors were funny, its progress was real.
The grammar problem was not easy to solve. Chinese grammar was too complicated. The position of the same word in a sentence might change the meaning of the sentence, and the same sentence might have different meanings depending on the context.
Zhang Zian found an old newspaper for Pi and asked it to type according to the news in it. The words in the newspaper were standard written language, with smooth sentences and clear meanings. It was not too late to learn spoken language after mastering the written language.
Pi enjoyed learning, but it couldn't go out in the pet shop, and the only person it could interact with was Zhang Zian. Zhang Zian often had to receive customers on the way, so he couldn't be with Pi all the time.
The most important thing in learning a language was communication. Through daily dialogue and interaction, Pi was immersed in the atmosphere of language learning. Unlike other elfins that could talk, Pi had no one to communicate with except Zhang Zian, so its Chinese learning soon hit a bottleneck. For the same reason, Pi was very lonely and often appeared depressed.
Zhang Zian also noticed this, but he had to deal with customers and take care of other elfins, so he couldn't spend too much time with Pi.
He wanted to find a way to make Pi less lonely.
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