"I think I'm too old, I think you have to be like five or something to do that."

"Well, if you'd rather play Flash Ball Five: The Underdark instead of learning Radchaai I can do that too," says the tablet.

"I'll do the basic stuff I'm just not promising to strike up conversations with strangers who will prosecute me like I'm a rapist if I forget to put on gloves."

"I want to learn it more to read than to chat, anyway."

The tablet is a very enthusiastic and eager Radchaai teacher.

Isabella is better at it than Xander but ropes him into sitting through enough of it to have more than the tablet to talk to, and he eventually learns to introduce himself and ask where the bathroom is.

The tablet at least does a very convincing imitation of being enthusiastic about and impressed by this.

Yeah okay he will attempt to learn Radchaai.

And later they can go watch that kids' movie, soak up some more local memes and see if they understand any sentences.

The kids' movie wouldn't be much out of place at home except that in animation it's harder to tell peoples' genders and the appliances are all modern ones. They might be able to identify a sentence here or there. 

It's a cute movie. "I'm not sure they even bother having canonical sexes for the characters," she remarks on their way out.

"What, they just draw somebody and have no idea what's going on under there, the hell you say, you need to be able to draw the nude form to get a good idea of how everything hangs. Maybe they don't pick for the kid characters and they wouldn't have any reason to for the brave little toaster, but the adults they gotta know."

"Were you able to identify the genders of any characters? I can use that to do English pronouns better."

"I think the kid's taller parent was a dude. The voice actor was anyway, that might be throwing me off."

"Concur," says Isabella. "Not sure about the short parent, and the voice actor there wasn't definitive either - I still can't figure out if this is people actually not finding sexual dimorphism's various characteristics interesting, or finding it gauche to dwell on them - is it like 'some people have attached earlobes and curly hair' or like 'some people are black' -"

"I don't know," says the tablet. "When you make inferences from the voice actor, are you going off how deep the voice is?"

"Yeah, dudes' voices change when we hit puberty, it's a thing. This can't have just... gone unnoticed."

"I don't really pay attention to most things. I'm sure lots of people know that. Everyone who sings, at least."

"There you go."

"It's not socially inappropriate to comment on peoples' singing voices. It's a little socially inappropriate to comment on their breasts."

"Whoop-de-doo, that's inappropriate at home too."

"Do people still breastfeed babies ever?"

"Yes. I think it's popular some places."

"I haven't seen anyone with a beard that I recall, are they just unfashionable on this planet?"

"I don't think there are any fashions that are universal, or even close, but beards are definitely extremely rare in pictures of famous people I can find."