"Can I study them all in the first place, to memorize them -"

"Yep."

It's a code. It's a random series of letters assigned to the English words. She can make up some associations to help her remember the letter-word correspondance. There's only ten of them. She can use mneumonics. 

This time she gets them all on the first try. Memorizing ten code words isn't very hard.

"Well! Does anyone want to go with me to find the syntax textbook?"  

"I think it has to be me, due to the godlessness."

"Oh, we can all go, I want to look around the library more."

Annisa prefers being alive to being dead but why does it have to be so INTENSELY HUMILIATING.

"I should probably find more languages references, too. I need to finish translating all this medieval German poetry so I can look like I'm just doing it spontaneously in about an hour and impress some enclavers– thanks for that idea, Annisa." 

" - sure thing," she says automatically.

"I think it's a Pavlovian thing," she says, looking at the shelves and not particularly at Annisa. "Your memory is fine. But every time you try to learn a language it goes badly, right, so you involuntarily flinch away from it and stop being in a - mental posture that allows you to use your memory, you know? Is the hypothesis, anyway."

Annisa does NOT PREFER TO DIE to having this conversation. REALLY. She DOESN'T. "What solution does that imply?"

"Well, I guess the ideal is Julian's idea, if you can totally dump the idea that you're learning a language and not a puzzle or a code. If that's not possible on a larger scale, I dunno, I - might have a book on it, actually, I should check."

She's going to owe these people such a mountain of favors. 

Suck it up. 

"That'd be cool. I'll see how far Julian's idea gets me."

"Cool. Uh, tell me if you see anything in the stacks about psychology, I guess. Or, you know, about spells to make it through an enemy army or the graduation hall in one piece."

"You know, a couple rows back I saw a book titled 'one easy spell to vaporize all mals for miles around' and I thought 'well, that's not what we're looking for at all, we're looking for French' and kept walking but if I see it again I'll point it out."

"I'd appreciate it."

"...I do expect to get a perfect grade on Baby's First Knife," Julian eventually remembers to say. Because he's such a hard-nosed realist. 

"If you manage to teach me French, I'll gild the handle, and make the gold carry an eight-part inscription for precise aiming. I bet none of the other valedictorian candidates have gold this early in the year.  - I'll want the gold back once it's graded."

And here is a shelf on French syntax! 

"Oh! Here we are. We've got Syntaxe générale ....Syntaxe comparée du français et de l'anglais: problèmes de traduction ...probably you don't want French Syntax of the Seventeenth Century ...." 

"I think I've just got modern French for now."

"And here's one in English! Okay, I think we're set." 

He is so smart and has such good ideas. 

Wow, Julian's good at the library.

They can go sit down and she can see if she's good at French syntax. It's just logic. Like a math class.

Then Julian will openThe Syntax of French!

The Syntax of French tells him to "note that the position of neither the definite article nor the head noun itself is relevant to the grammaticality judgements: the definite article is merged within functional structure above NP*, while the head noun undergoes N movement out of NP* (see §3 for details)." 

....probably if he admits to Annisa that he has no idea what is going on this will just freak her out even more. 

Annisa is doing her flashcards with Naima again so Julian has a bit of time to try to figure out the French syntax book.

Okay, let's try one of the French ones! 

.....it's just as confusing, but in French. At least it has diagrams? 

"Hey, Annisa? How does this look?"