Although they’re two different languages, Sønheim Sign gets the same font/colors as Sønska for the sake of making my life easier.
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Woman: Eh-cuuse me? Aah you soonska?
Thorn (thinking): Uh-oh . . . she sounds deaf. I didn’t catch a word of that. Hope it isn’t anything bad . . .
Leif (signing): What can I help you with?
Woman (signing): Ah, you sign! Good. Is there anything edible around here?
Leif (signing): Yes! The Iudska food stalls are very tolerable. Not spicy at all.
Woman (signing): Ooh, thanks!
Thorn: ?!
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11 Comments
Hang on, the servant sign is Sonska sign? Isn’t that a big risk for the servants?
I think Our Lovely Author/Artist has touched on it before. The managers don’t know Sønska Sign, and despite what we think sometimes, aren’t out to make the servant’s lives miserable. I imagine it’s really no different than the servants knowing a non-Sønska language i.e. just another marketable skill.
What kind of risk? They don’t learn sign to keep secrets, they learn it so they can communicate discretely and unobtrusively, like ideal servants. The fact that it isn’t picked up by audio monitoring and can be done out of the line-of-sight of security cameras is total coincidence and not something they take advantage of at all.
(Besides, there’s no way they could keep an entire secret sign language standardized among all the indentured servants across Sønheim. And no way to keep it from being infiltrated. Might as well go with something widely-known, and take advantage of the existing infrastructure of tutorials, videos, and online dictionaries.)
It’s a lot easier to tell if someone’s looking than if someone’s listening. Especially if you’re able to keep the signs small and shaded from most angles by your body. Fingerspelling, for instance, is going to be hard for most people to pick up from across the room even if they’re watching, unless you’re deliberately exaggerating it for that purpose.
If I recall correctly, while they are monitored via intercoms, there is no video recording. Only sound. (I think.)
That, or the signs are similar enough that Leif can flip between them if necessary but different enough that a casual viewer/signer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Or the Servant Sign is derived from normal sign, but with different motions for more sensitive topics.
I’m pretty sure they are just using Sønheim Sign. If there was any hint of ‘this is a specific variant devised to foil The Man’s understanding’ Leif would refuse to use it and report it to a manager. He’s a Good Boy, after all.
Uh-oh, his knowledge of signing has been revealed! Now if Thorn sees Leif making subtle hand gestures, he’ll know they have meaning!
Hopefully he can trust him with this secret.
I don’t think Thorn is inclined to tell Leif’s…bosses…anything that could let them hurt him. Especially given what he now knows (ie. Leif is effectively a slave, the embassy tried to feed him to vampires). I get the feeling that Thorn is lawful good enough to not try anything directly against the embassy, but he really doesn’t like them right now.
The embassy tried nothing. They DID feed him to vampires. Leif was always going to survive that. I’m sure he would have made a stink about not being able to settle his debt through service if they were going to drain every last drop.
You’re not helping their case. And his debt is too large to be settled through service, unless it’s at a rate of a million per year. Him dying to feed two vampires might be conaidered settling the debt, esp. Since I don’t think he has next of kin.
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