"Yes - English, Russian, French, and Greek. English is my native language, I speak Russian very well, my French is adequate, and my Greek is terrible."

"We can't write things down because we've yet to figure out how to produce paper easily, but we'd be delighted if you'd come talk with us."

"I'd be happy to. How is Thindarin written?"

"We've just been using our own grammar and actually all of the words related to writing are loanwords that are just Thindarinized in pronunciation, they're not literate. I don't mean that judgmentally. They were in the Outer Lands while we were in Valinor, they were fighting for their lives while we were hoping the Valar'd let us leave."

"Huh!" he says, surprised. "Writing is useful; has anyone tried to give it to them?" That's going on the medium-term list, something neither directly urgent nor needing to be put off until he's at the point of solving death.

"Less useful to nomadic people living in trees."

"That's true. Still. I believe that everyone should have nice things."

"And they think we're very foolish not having the nice things of trees and the knowledge of how to live in them. Not everyone's a Noldo."

"That's true."

This pushes 'bring literacy to the rest of the continent' somewhat farther down the medium-term list, but doesn't erase it completely. He attempts to explain in his still-slightly-awkward Thindarin:

"On Barrayar, nearly everyone has things like this," he brings up some Quenya engineering notes on his reader to indicate it as the subject of conversation and demonstrate some of its functions in case she hasn't heard, "but there are still some places where very few people are literate and no one has these, and people there don't want them because they don't think they will be useful. Whenever I convince people to try them, they always end up being more useful than the people expected."

"I don't think they think it's useless, just... aesthetically displeasing."

"That too," he laughs. "I won't push anything on anyone, but I do want a chance to," does he have an idiom for this in Thindarin, no he does not, Quenya it is, "make my pitch, you know? Later. When I have time."

"The pitch on 'please don't mind us settling in your land' and 'please don't mind us digging it up for metal' seem a higher priority."

"Should I be helping with those too?"

"With diplomacy? Half their issue with us is that they think we're very odd and you're, no offense, a good deal odder."

"I see no reason to be offended by this extremely accurate assessment."

"I'm not sure building friendly relations with the neighbors is one of your manifest strengths, but I'll find someone hard to scare off and ask them to come say hello."

"Thanks."

"Any time. Now - your languages."

"What would you like to know about them?"

"How to speak them!!"

Miles giggles. "I've never taught a language before, should I just launch right into repeating sentences like you were doing for Quenya and Thindarin?"

"Yes, that's a fine way to start. The technical process is the simplest sentence with a subject and an associated action, then demonstrate modifiers in all permitted sentence positions - the man ran, the man ran fast, the ugly man ran - then objects and arguments and so forth. But I'm not sure we standardized on that because it works best rather than because it's systemic."

"Sure. Sure. Actually, I could try to double-speak English and Thindarin instead of English and Quenya - actually, I could try to double-speak English and Thindarin instead of English and Quenya - my eloquence will suffer but my learnability might increase - my eloquence will suffer but my learnability might increase."

She repeats everything after him, fascinated.

He makes the switch to double-speaking English and Thindarin. "When next I have the time, I'm going to write down all the English poems and songs I remember and translate them into Quenya. It might not be for a while, though. I am a busy person."