Heinrich Hexenmeister
May 31, 2018 2:49 PM
I claim this section in the name of Deutschland by Heinrich Hexenmeister
Heinrich was trying to find a book. He was in a library, so he was in a good spot for it, but the problem was that this particular library, like most of the people in it, was predominantly dominated by English. While Heinrich was getting better in the reading comprehension areas of that particular language, it was still slow going and prone to mistakes and context-driven guesswork. Context that book titles didn’t always provide.He scowled at the spines of an entire bookshelf, irrationally angry at each and every one for being tantalizingly close to understandable, but not quite there. How hard would it be, really, just to have some German books?
And then Heinrich gasped and blinked, and he might have heard sounds of confusion coming from the nearby library denizens as every book he could see was abruptly translated into German.
Taking advantage before his good fortune vanished, he quickly scanned over the titles until he found ones that looked promising for his research into his transfiguration essay. He pulled down three and hugged them to his chest and frowned defensively at another nearby student, aware that this latest incident of accidental magic could only have come from him - he hadn’t realized he had contracted the disease, but he imagined he was the only person in the school who would want a library full of German books; or at least a section full of German Transfiguration books, which seemed to be the extent of his influence, judging by the English Charms books on the shelf behind him - but he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it.
It felt so good to see so much of his native language again for once. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he had missed the letter ß. And umlauts.
“Englisch is hard,” he told the student he had frowned at, by way of defence.
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
I claim this section in the name of Deutschland
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
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Nathaniel Mordue
June 03, 2018 1:40 PM
Why stop at one section? by Nathaniel Mordue
Nathaniel was anxious about Sylvia - he could see no other logical response to knowing that his cousin was ill while she showed no signs of illness and there was no way to tell when she would abruptly begin doing so - but while her condition remained in Limbo, the rest of his life went relentlessly on, demanding his attention at every turn. There were always lessons to attend, homework to do, and to beg off any of that - or even give it less than his best - because of anxiety over his cousin would be self-indulgent of him. Especially since he couldn’t honestly deny that he would have rather spent his time with Sylvia, or even alone, than in dutiful study anyway. Therefore, he had to spend a certain amount of time in the library.Transfiguration and Potions were frequent causes of these searches for extra information, or at least for different presentations, easier-to-understand presentations, of the same information. Potions’ challenges were not to be sneered at - the memorization, the occasional apparent contradiction in terms in theory - but today it was Transfiguration which drove him to the stacks, the subject on the syllabus which was often the most stubbornly esoteric. For this reason, when Nathaniel opened a book he had just removed from the shelf and found he could not understand a single word on the page, he felt a flash of despair before he realized that this made no sense. There were places where the symbols and variables and terms of Transfiguration spread across pages like fanning fungi with no clear relationship to the English language, but this was the table of contents. It was also everything on the page, and recognizably Not English - even though the title on the spine, when he’d put his hand on it, had been. He looked up in surprise, met Heinrich Hexemeister’s eyes, and was promptly frowned at so severely that for a moment he thought Heinrich thought Nathaniel was responsible for the aberration, until he realized that also didn’t make any sense.
”Englisch is hard,” said Heinrich, hugging books, and Nathaniel realized what must have happened.
“So is German,” said Nathaniel, with a slight smile he hoped removed any sting from the comment he’d made before he thought. He had always gotten the impression that Germany was a very severe, humorless sort of place - though admittedly he had the same impression of Russia, and Miss Vorontsov’s tendencies to bejewel herself to the point that she could wave to someone on the other side of the border of gaudiness and to often seem very merry with her friends seemed to contradict that. “I didn’t have much luck learning it, anyway.”
There was no point in pointing out that Heinrich was probably ill - he probably knew that, and in any case, they were in classrooms together most of the day and so there was no real point to trying to avoid people to avoid a second infection, if that was something that could occur. It was just going to go around and around until it stopped, or they found some treatment or disinfectant for the school for it. “Since the whole library is usually English, though, I think everyone should forgive you for the Transfiguration books not being for a little while,” he added.
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Nathaniel Mordue
Why stop at one section?
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Nathaniel Mordue
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Heinrich
June 07, 2018 4:14 PM
I don’t want to be greedy. by Heinrich
Heinrich knew, of course, that English speakers called his native tongue German. In all truth, “German” means “Deutsch” was a much easier leap for him than “Dutch” means “Holländisch”, but it still took a couple seconds to work out that Nathaniel Mordue was saying that he had attempted to learn Heinrich’s first language. It took a few more - just long enough for hope to rise up only to be dashed viciously against the sharp rocks of disappointment - to understand that Nathaniel had failed in his attempt.He said more words, but Heinrich paid them little mind. Something about English and Transfiguration, so he was probably going on about what Heinrich had just done to the library. Not important. An effort had been put forth once. There was hope. His classmates’ interest in speaking his tongue could only be fostered and encouraged.
“Want you I teach?” he offered hopefully. There was probably a supposed to be a ‘do’ in there somewhere. English was very fond of their verb ‘do’ but he could never remember exactly when or how it was supposed to get shoved into sentences that seemed perfectly understandable without it. Also, he wasn’t sure if maybe he ought to include a second ‘you’ as the object for the verb ‘teach’ but he had already said ‘you’ once as the subject of the verb ‘want’, and English often dropped referencing words, trying to be efficient at the cost of clarity.
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Heinrich
I don’t want to be greedy.
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Heinrich
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Nathaniel
June 14, 2018 12:24 PM
Whyever not? by Nathaniel
Nathaniel looked blankly at Heinrich for a moment, both because of the need to organize the grammar in his head and because he didn’t quite follow the details – why would Heinrich offer to teach him Transfiguration? Or for Heinrich to teach at all? Then he realized….In theory, Nathaniel liked languages, liked seeing how other people to communicated and the differences between the specific meanings of words. In practice, however, he remembered grammar errors, faulty conjugations, his father finding these alternatively amusing and annoying – his father had been able to speak and read and write French in particular rather well, as far as Nathaniel had been able to tell when he had still heard or read anything his father put into words, about as well as he had English. Nathaniel had no idea where, exactly, his father had gone, but he knew they spoke French for official purposes, anyway, because the documents Mama had received the morning everything fell apart had been in French.
German was not, however, French – obviously. And he clearly wasn’t the only one who made grammar mistakes with languages – but he wasn’t the only one who spoke the language he presumably did know some grammar in. Nathaniel had also come to Sonora with family, with built-in friends in Sylvia and Simon. Heinrich did not have this advantage. He almost certainly wasn’t so much interested in Nathaniel’s education as in, well, socialization. Or at least an excuse to put German and English side-by-side to improve his grasp of the latter with less embarrassment.
“If you want to try,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “It can’t hurt to try, can it?”
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Nathaniel
Whyever not?
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Nathaniel
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