"Well, that's an obvious thing to do next, then."

"Yeah! Books are important."

"Yeah. How, um, irrational, is spelling in your language?"

She giggles at that. "Mine, not very."

"Okay well English kind of looks like the dictionary was written by someone using recreational drugs so."

She giggles even more. "Why?"

"The short version is 'because we borrow words from other languages like a broke alcoholic hitting up his friends for booze money, and the languages we borrow from have different spelling rules'."

"What kinds of things are like that?"

Edie explains the disaster of inconsistent pronunciation that is the "ugh" cluster, drawing examples from a children's book called "The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough."

"Oh my gods," she says.

"I know, it's ridiculous."

"It is. I love it. I will take a very long time to learn it."

"Yeah. Fortunately in real life people notice when people have foreign accents and don't assume that you mean the absurd interpretation of the sounds that came out of your mouth instead of realizing that you were mispronouncing something."

She grins sheepishly. "Sorry."

"For what?"

"My accent."

"...Why are you apologizing for your accent?"

She shrugs. "In this language it might make me—" unintelligible.

"Don't worry about it. Most people don't have helpful telepathy, you're doing well."

"Yeah. The helpful telepathy is very helpful, I can speak complete sentences!"

"Telepathy is the best, it's a pity I didn't get it sooner."

"You're the best," she giggles. "I think this was a very successful date."

"I agree."

"What do we do next?"

"I could try to teach you to read?"