Professor Skies
August 10, 2018 11:04 PM
Beginners - Button It by Professor Skies
“Good morning,” Selina greeted the beginners class, eyes travelling around the room to take note of the new faces. A lot of the surnames on the roll call were familiar, and not just due to the usual Pureblood families with a large influence in the school. Hopefully, that meant that most of the first years were having an easy time settling in, as they had older relatives to help them adjust.“For our new first years, welcome to Transfiguration, and to the start of your classes at Sonora Academy. I am Professor Skies,” she smiled. Transfiguration for the beginners was every day after breakfast, and so this was always their first introduction to lessons and to using their wands. A little harsh, perhaps, given its reputed difficulty compared to other branches of magic, though hopefully their spirits wouldn’t be too dented if they got lack lustre results. In that sense, having the second years alongside might be a help - it showed how far they could progress in a single year. Though she supposed a year was a long time to eleven and twelve year olds…. “The first thing to know, is that Transfiguration is very difficult magic. It may take several attempts before you start to see results. You are likely to progress through each transformation by making small steps and alterations, rather than by being able to achieve a complete result in one go. Just remember, that even when it feels like you’re failing, you are still learning something. You need to learn to channel your magic, to have it respond to your will rather than your emotions, and all of this is good practise.
“Successful transfiguration comes from two things - one is clear visualisation, the other is respecting the laws and limits of this branch of magic,” behind her, the chalk wrote these two headings in elegant, looping handwriting.
“Visualisation is key. Picturing what you want your object to turn into, and how it is going to get there. Let’s take the classic example of a matchstick into a needle. What is similar about the two objects, and in what ways do they differ? Second years, you should all be experts at answering this type of question by now,” she added, wanting to rouse any sleepy older students who had tuned out on the assumption that this part of the lesson was not for them. Behind her, the chalk drew a matchstick and a needle, annotating them as suggestions came in from the students about their similarities and differences.
“Good,” Selina nodded, when she felt they had covered all of the important points, “So, thinking through the items - their properties - allows us to really concentrate on what it means to turn one into the other. It also allows us to find any common points - they are both long and thin, for example - areas where we can see a similarity, and help link the objects in our minds. That’s important, and it brings us on to point number two.
“There are a number of legal restrictions on transfiguration and laws of nature against which it will not work. We will look at those more throughout your time here at Sonora. In terms of laws of nature, the first thing to know is that it helps for there to be some similarity between the objects you are transfiguring. Some would say it is always essential, just as your power grows those connections can become more and more tenuous and abstract. To begin with, you will almost always work with objects of a similar size and shape to those which you are attempting to create. Finding those similarities is as key as finding the differences - identifying the differences allows you to see the work you have to do, but identifying the similarities allows you to know that it is possible.
“To help with this process, you will fill out transfiguration tables before you attempt to begin casting. These list all the ways in which you can compare objects - their size, their colour, their function etcetera,” she explained. A table with a full list of headings down one side and two blank columns next to these made their way to each first year, “Second years, you should be able to do this from scratch by now, but you may take a table if you wish. You may fill this out however you like. With pictures. With words. You may write in a language other than English. The purpose of these is to help guide your mental process. For you to show yourself what you need to do, though I will ask you to produce a neat, English version for homework so that I can check your working.
“The lesson today will be on pebbles to buttons,” as she explained this, a box made its way round the room, so that each person could select a pebble. There was some variation in the size and colouring but if anyone got too hung up about making their selection, the box would pointedly rattle itself at them. “You will first need to fill out your tables to describe what steps that transformation will require. When you are ready to cast, the incantation is Pangolus. The wand movement is a clockwise circle if you are right-handed. If you are left-handed, a counterclockwise variation is possible - it is generally considered less effective but this is balanced out if it feels more comfortable and natural for you to move in that way,” behind her the chalk scribbled this key information on the board. Selina held up a pebble, demonstrating the spell by making a pretty flower shaped button with shimmering mother of pearl inlay.
“Second years, challenge yourselves by removing your pebble further from its original state - change its colour, make a more pronounced variation to the size, or the shape, or include a nice pattern.
“If you are stuck, chapter two of your textbooks has more about transfiguration tables, whilst chapter three has more theoretical background to the subject. You may also call me over, or talk quietly amongst yourselves. You may begin.”
OOC - posts should be a minimum of 200 words and will be graded based on length, relevance, realism and creativity. If you have any problems (or are causing problems whereby a teacher would likely step in) please tag me in the subject line and give me time to respond. Selina would not let things get out of hand. Bear in mind that during their first transfiguration lesson, only Hermione managed to get any effect, and she was a freaking prodigy. We’ll allow you to go a little faster for the sake of having interesting things happen/variation between people but be prepared to not get very far very fast. If you have questions about the lesson or realism, then stop by chatzy or ask on the OOC.
Subthreads: A Button in a Pebble Stack [tag Ness and Malikhi] by Evelyn Stones with Malikhi Hill, Pecari, Ness McLeod, Aladren, Ness McLeod, DH Skies
Let's just get on with it. by Julius Astley with Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw
But what is 'it'? by Katerina Vorontsov with Heinrich Hexenmeister
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Professor Skies
Beginners - Button It
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Professor Skies
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Katerina Vorontsov
August 16, 2018 11:52 AM
But what is 'it'? by Katerina Vorontsov
It had never occurred to Katya to sit anywhere but the very front of the room until the moment she entered the Transfiguration classroom. Then she saw Julius Astley and her mouth thinned in irritation.Well. He could tell her not to speak, but he could not even prohibit that, much less her sitting wherever she wanted. She marched to the front of the room and chose the available seat as far as humanly possible from his.
She was here to learn, she thought, not to teach boors how to be civilized. Or anything other than to learn, really. She had to dedicate herself to learning magic and perfecting her English – the latter perhaps to help teach her little brother Alyosha, but also to increase her own accomplishments when she came out into society when she grew up. English was an increasingly useful language, she thought, and besides, the more languages she could manage in, the more accomplished she was, and the more she would eventually be able to rub it in the face of the likes of Julius Astley without technically saying a word out of turn.
That day, however, was still a long way away, as Professor Skies clearly demonstrated. Tak mnogo slov! Katya copied down everything on the board and just hoped she could catch up with the rest, suddenly understanding why her sister’s daily kit contained reading stands and dictionaries. Katya absolutely did not want to bring out her Russian versions of beginner textbooks or her Anglo-Russian dictionary in front of people, but she could see how it would be much more convenient to have less pride about that issue. It wouldn’t be foolproof, though – at one point she knew she heard the words “ten you” said together, and she couldn’t think of a construction she had seen where that made sense in the rest of the sentence she had mostly picked up.
One phrase did, however, leap out at her with absolute clarity: write language other than English. She could write Russian on the chart. Thank the vesnas.
Except…everyone else would not write Russian. Everyone else would presumably write English. It was an English school. Even the headings on the sheet itself were in English. So she should try to write English, so as not to stand out to the professor as foreign, strange, unintelligent. She was not here to write Russian; she had only spoken Russian with Tatiana at breakfast because Tatiana had been in one of her wild, bright moods and had pretended she could not remember how to speak English before she had her tea. It was not polite for them to speak Russian when other people were about, and since Monsieur Montoir had so kindly shown her down to breakfast, it had been bad of Tatiana to immediately start talking to Katerina in Russian. Monsieur Montoir understood some Russian, it was true, but it was not his language – they should have spoken either French or English at breakfast, and Katerina should write English now. Suppressing a wave of bitter disappointment, she set her mind to the task.
Chapter two had more about the tables. All right. She would go to chapter two. She had most likely, she thought, already read this information – in her last month at home, Anton Petrovich had had her translating back and forth in her textbooks to practice her academic English. Yes, she knew this. She had made notes in the margins about especially difficult terms and what they meant in Russian. She also knew the word ‘button’ – that was what was on various items of clothes. Her second English book had involved a whole chapter just about words about clothes and parts of clothes, when she had been learning how to read. So pebble, that was another word for the stone….
Professor Skies had made a very beautiful button. Katya wanted to do something like that, but she was not sure her stone was best-suited to it. It was not a very pretty stone – plain and grey. It would be very difficult, and this was the first time she had ever tried to Transfigure something instead of just reading about it.
“Pan-glous. Pan-go-lus – Pan – I am sorry,” she added to her neighbor. “I hope I do not bother you?”
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Katerina Vorontsov
But what is 'it'?
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
September 10, 2018 8:11 AM
'It' is a pronoun whose meaning changes by context by Heinrich Hexenmeister
Heinrich was glad to be in second year. There were a lot of other problems associated to this year, but being the older half of the beginners was not one of them. He had a handle on how most subjects worked. His English comprehension was getting a lot better. And he knew what Transfiguration Tables were already, and had already heard most of today's lecture about what Transfiguration was before. He paid enough attention to make sure he wasn't missing anything new for the second years, but he settled for understanding the gist rather than trying to translate every word.Despite his improved English over last year, he still pulled out a German version of the textbook and laid it out on his desk. As the Transfiguration Tables were mostly for his own use, and the professor was ameniable to them being in other languages, he did not for a moment consider writing it in anything but German. He'd have to use English for the copy he turned in for his homework, but he could do the messy process of translating in his own room, where he could spread out his dictionaries and texts (both German and English) to make sure he was using the right word.
After he selected a pebble from the box, he pulled out a blank sheet of parchment and drew his own Transfiguration Table, as the second years were expected to do now. He provided German titles to each of his columns and rows. He obviously already knew those words after a year of getting a handout with them in English, but would match the content better that way. He'd always thought it looked a bit jarring to have the titles in English and the boxes filled in German.
He was still considering how to make a button that was different enough from his pebble that it would count as 'challenging himself' when his neighbor began working on her pronounciation of the incantation.
"It is nothing to me," he promised when she apologized for her effort. "Trying makes you better." He wasn't entirely sure about his sentence constructions, but he hoped they were close enough to get across his lack of offense and his understanding about how important practice was. Her own word choice was comfortingly simple, and he noticed an accent, much like Tatiana's, so he wondered if she was also struggling with the sheer volume of English surrounding them. "I am Heinrich," he introduced himself, deciding to leave of his surname. Russia was probably less likely than some other places to have heard of his parents' arrest and conviction, but there was no sense in taking chances.
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
'It' is a pronoun whose meaning changes by context
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Katerina Vorontsov
September 10, 2018 6:37 PM
I suspect context can make 'it' a real headache of a word. by Katerina Vorontsov
Heinrich. That was not a Russian name at all, of course – she had figured out reading history that someone Germans called Heinrich and the English called Henry, Russians would call Genrikh; Katya had practiced the ‘huh’ sound a lot, between English and German lessons, but it still never sounded quite natural to her somehow, a hurdle she had yet to conquer in her efforts to master languages far removed from her mother tongue – but both the boy’s name and his accent were European rather than American, and so among the more euphonious ones she had heard lately.“It is nice to meet you, Heinrich,” said Katya, in the careful, formal English of one who knew the language primarily from books and dialogues with a teacher. “My name is Katerina Vorontsov.” She was pleased to remember not to include her patronymic or the last syllable of her surname, in the English manner. It seemed less pressing with another outsider, as someone else with an accent was less likely to force her to endure a second experience of being publicly humiliated in that way at least, but she was determined to get it right.
“I do not – remember you at Orientation,” she added, stumbling slightly as she tried to work around tense shifts and a verb she was not, in this moment, one hundred percent sure of. “You are a second year? What do you think of Sonora?”
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Katerina Vorontsov
I suspect context can make 'it' a real headache of a word.
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Katerina Vorontsov
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Heinrich
September 11, 2018 10:55 AM
‘It’ is a headache. But not so bad as prepositions. by Heinrich
He smiled back at Katya. For a moment, Heinrich couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with Katya’s English. It followed all the grammatical rules he knew, and almost could have come right out of one of his own practice conversations in the language. But he recognized something was off about it, but it took a few moments for him to realize . . . it was too perfect. Real native speakers were much lazier in their grammar.On the one hand, it made him want to bang his head repeatedly on his desk because what was the point of having grammar rules if the speakers of the language didn’t use them??
On the other hand, he felt pretty proud of himself for being able to make this observation. He wouldn’t have been able to a year ago.
“Yes,” he confirmed, “I am a second year.” He recognized his own sentence had the same failing as hers; it was too perfect, with each word carefully enunciated as best as his accent allowed. Native speakers wouldn’t have phrased it like that, he was sure, or if they did, they would have blurred the words together more. He realized this was why he had found Masha, with her own accented English, easier to understand than, say, Michael DiCaprio, who used fast words and slang that didn’t make it into early vocabulary lessons.
“I like Sonora,” he admitted, a sentence he would not have used a year ago, even if he could have constructed it. Even now he wasn’t entirely sure of its truthfulness, though after this summer he could certainly see its advantages over a German school or even a European school. “The teachers are nice and have understanding. The English is the hard thing.” That sentence was not too perfect, but in the bad way that meant his vocabulary was failing him. “People talk fast. It makes it hard for friends finding.”
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Heinrich
‘It’ is a headache. But not so bad as prepositions.
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Heinrich
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Katerina
September 17, 2018 9:53 PM
And tenses. Don't get me started on tenses. by Katerina
Heinrich used short, straightforward sentences. This was – at least when it wasn’t done for her benefit, as it clearly wasn’t here – a trait Katya appreciated in a person. His grammar twisted on itself a bit, but since the distortion wasn’t severe and the words were simple, she understood him, and felt an almost instant affinity toward him because of, rather than in spite of, this fact. He was like her, an outsider to this world.“I agree,” said Katya. “The first person I see here – he was unpolite.” She did not dignify Julius Astley with a look in his direction. She had now met three other people who were not unspeakably rude and therefore concluded Julius was the anomaly and not worth her time. “But it is not – “ she wanted to say nevozmozhno, ‘not possible,’ but she couldn’t remember the English word. “The thing you cannot do,” she rephrased awkwardly instead. “You are the third nice person I see here.”
She was sure she was making mistakes in her English, veering so far away from the scripts she had learned in her practice conversations in an effort to express what she really thought. She considered another tactic that she hoped might both further please her new companion and distract from the imperfections of her English – a silly thing to be bothered by when his was just as flawed, but there it was.
“Bist du Deutscher?” she asked in German. She had always liked German, though she could not read it as well as English or French, the languages it had been determined for her she should study the most. “Meine Mutter kommt aus Russland, aber sie – war in Deutschland, einmal,” she added, with only a small hesitation over how to explain that Mama had spent time in Germany when she was young. Russian was the only language, she thought ruefully, where she could really say all she wanted to say, but there was no way to improve the others except to try, realize where she failed, study, and then try again.
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Katerina
And tenses. Don't get me started on tenses.
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Katerina
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Heinrich
October 03, 2018 4:03 PM
Oh, I am with you there! by Heinrich
German! She spoke German! Not perfectly, it was clear, but enough! Enough that it would have immediately gotten her an invitation to the ball last year, enough that his eyes widened in surprise and delight and relief, enough to lighten his heart and make him smile to hear his native tongue again, in this setting.Enough to terrify the wits out of him.
Katerina was Russian, presumably, since she said her mother was from Russia. But the woman had been to Germany. Past tense, so not anymore, and possibly only once -hard to tell with non-native speakers - but Germany was apparently important enough to her that her daughter learned the language and was aware of that trip into Europe.
How long ago? Decades ago? Last year? If last year . . . if last year she couldn’t have missed hearing about the trial.
His smile faded and a fresh wariness entered his eyes. “Yes,” he told her, responding in his own language, but speaking slowly for her. “I am from Germany. You speak German very well. You have been there yourself?” he asked nervously, hoping for a negative because if Katerina had not gone it made it less likely her mother had visited recently. Though even if it had been years ago, she might keep up with current events, and that would be bad.
Though the hope he clung to was that Katerina had not already asked about the Hexenmeister trial. Even if Frau Vorontsov knew, she probably hadn’t told her kids about some German assassins going to jail. Who did that?
Of course, it may come back in the next owl post after Katerina tells her mother that she met a Hexenmeister from Germany.
“Your family has friends there?” he questioned, trying to keep it light and casual, like his life and future happiness didn’t lie in the balance. He doubted his success.
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Heinrich
Oh, I am with you there!
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Katerina
October 10, 2018 12:40 PM
Glad we're on the same page. by Katerina
Katya listened closely, glad for relatively short, straightforward sentences in German as well as English, and then shook her head. “No,” she said, also in German. “I do not go to Germany. Mama war – eine Mӓdchen.” She wasn’t totally sure that it was the correct word, because Mama had not been a very small girl at the time, but she had not been married then either. ‘A girl’ was close enough, describing that it had been a long time since Mama had spent time in Germany.She was highly occupied with feeling proud of herself for carrying on a conversation in passable German (she’d be amazed if Julius Astley could carry on a coherent conversation in anything – including English, ostensibly his everyday language), but not so much that she did not notice that at one point her new friend had been smiling and that now he was not, and sounded wary. She filed away this observation, needing her concentration to not speak some bizarre hybrid of two languages at once, one of them most likely Russian and therefore not one she thought it was reasonable to expect a German to understand. Germany and Russia had a long, complicated historical relationship, but overall, she thought there were more Russians who spoke some German than Germans who spoke Russian.
“Es ist möglich, dass Mama immer hat Freundins,” she said slowly, then immediately realized she had almost certainly made two mistakes – one in scrambling German and English pluralization and another in where she’d put that last verb. She flushed slightly, hoping it’s possible that Mama still has friends was comprehensible. “Mama likes Europe, but Papa is in Alaska, so we live there, and I come here. Once I went to St. Petersburg,” she added, lest she seem too provincial. Sometimes she feared that all the languages in the world wouldn’t be enough to ever allow her to claim sophistication. She had seen how the girls in St. Petersburg laughed behind their hands at Anya…. “You have friends in many places?” she asked.
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Katerina
Glad we're on the same page.
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Katerina
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