Experdize Egyptian Flight - Applied

How to play: you are the passenger in seat 32A on a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, and everything anybody says to you is in Egyptian. An announcement comes over the cabin speakers, or the attendant stops at your row — and instead of picking a translation, you do the thing: pull the window blind up, fold the tray table away, switch the reading light off, press the call button. The whole cabin is on screen the entire time. What makes this cabin Egyptian rather than any other is that half the country says mở đèn and the other half says bật đèn for the same instruction — and both are on this aircraft, because a crew is not all from one place. On top of that mở does three different jobs: switch the lamp on, open the vent, and (with ra) unfold the tray table. So the noun after the verb is what carries the answer. Two more things this cabin drills: the classifier, which is not optional — một ly cà phê a glass, một chai nước a bottle, một tấm chăn a blanket — and the kinship pronouns, because the crew call you anh or chị and call themselves em, and there is no neutral "you" in this language at all. Three surfaces answer the three kinds of cue: the cabin panel, a seat map of thirty seats (rows 31 and 34 are ba mươi mốt and ba mươi tư, the two irregular numbers), and the service trolley at meal time. Get it wrong and the wrong thing happens — reach for the seat belt when you were asked about the overhead locker and the belt really does fasten — then the panel marks what the line asked for, the crew put you right, and the cue comes back around later. There is no failing and no time limit. What the clock remembers is how long the leg took, and the stamps how many you got first time. Five legs make the flight: boarding, the safety demonstration, cruise, the meal service, and landing — and the cabin grows from four things you can touch to eighteen as the flight goes on. It is the ninth lesson of the Egyptian course, and it picks up where Experdize Egyptian Airport - Applied — the check-in hall — leaves you at the gate.