QUOTE : Nak stepped him through the Narashtovik alphabet, which was nearly identical to Mallish but lacking three letters, and the subtleties of its pronunciation, which unlike the Mallish stew was regular and orderly as the board of a game of cotters, and which Nak claimed was close enough to Gaskan to sound like no more than a regional accent. He made Dante write it out five times, then speak each letter five more. He drilled Dante on the verb conjugations of Narashtovik and its relation to modern Gaskan. He showed him the structure of its grammar in simple sentences, taught him a handful of words, the precise laws of how a verb cycled through the tenses of the present, the past, the future, the subjunctive. He bade Dante write out a dozen verbs through each of their forms and left on some monkish errand. Busywork, Dante thought, and far too much to take in at once. That Nak wanted him to learn through rote memorization struck him as an insult.