READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
"Amad," said Tarzan.
The mental images began to come faster. There were
two men, followed by the plural word: madan. Then there
were two women and the plural: amadan.
Then boy: manid; and girl: amadid; and the plurals:
manidan and amanidan; male child: lid; female child: alid;
and the plurals: lidden and alidden.
And so the strange, eerie images and symbols progressed,
faster and faster, until Tarzan desisted in his
attempts to pronounce them. Most amazing of all, as he
relaxed his mind to receive Kar Komak's thoughts, was the
fact that they came to him with such penetrating force that
there was no question of being able to remember. The
vocabulary and grammatical structures, the distinctions
between formal and informal moods and cases and persons,
refined usages and slight regional differences of meaning or
pronunciation—all remained indelibly fixed in his mind.
Within a period of one hour, Tarzan found himself conjugating
Martian verbs in five moods and seven tenses.
Kar Komak slowed the flier's headlong pace above the
dead sea bottoms and circled about aimlessly for hours until
the sun arose, while Tarzan closed his eyes and allowed his
mind to absorb what might have required years of painstaking
labor by the mechanical and wastefully repetitious traditional
methods of language learning.
At last, he opened his eyes and smiled at his companion.
With perfect ease, he said, "Goyan sumidu goyanan
kuonanauni pthalanari u ni-golanan uri...” Which meant: "I
think that we may be able to communicate with each other
now...”
Actually, Kar Komak had not taught the apeman element
by element and step by step, as one might build a house by
placing brick upon brick. By a process of memory transference
and giving Tarzan a feeling for moods and perspectives
Barsoomian, he had rather given him the plans for the "house"
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