I don't view broken, hardly readable text as something unimportant. An author who wants to amount to something should recognize that. I don't give a damn about multiple ellipses in his text. I rather don't agree with the atrocious spelling that is chosen to denote accent, and I made myself perfectly clear on that point.

I don't think that it is a light issue and that it could be neglected. The explanations that it is a broken charms at work are just platitudes that cannot improve deplorable readability. When I have to stop and re-read some passages it is universally bad. Yes, I can see that the author may have wanted to show that the translation charm is faulty, but I still had to stop and re-read these passages in order to understand them. Also, it is thrice as bad when I see the manner of spelling like "zome", "dat", and "dizguzting", because it is unprofessional, and shows the author's careless or flippant attitude towards his readers.

 

Don't know what your on about, it's written fine and no one else seems to have a problem. I actual like the fact it's written how Harry hears it (with missing words), not how the author wants readers to hear it. Obviously what is being said isn't anything important otherwise there would be more clarification. For now the fact that Harry doesn't comprehend is a plot device in itself, and not nearly as annoying as you make it out to be.

As far how the author spells slavic/german speech ("zome", "dat", and "dizguzting"), I'll leave that up to you linguist critics to decide. Again, it doesn't bother me at all because if that's how it sounds to Harry when they are speaking, I see no problem with him writing it down like that as well, and for me it is still easy to read.

 

Sure, all of what you said is true - but what you neglected to mention is that despite the various and numerous fountains of knowledge, known of those were readily available to him in Hogwarts. The teachers might be better, but if they're unwilling to teach at his own pace, it's meaningless.

 

What the fu-

Okay, let's try again.

1. The author explained, in full, that the charm doesn't take to him as completely (including examples of wizards that the charm worked on flawlessly).
2. The incomplete charm means that he cannot fully understand, or be understood in, German.
Conclusion: You're not supposed to understand what he's saying until the fucking charm has affected him enough to learn the language.

This isn't a case of language abuse or flippant attitude towards his readers; it's creative license. Even at that, the fact that you can't understand what is being implied from the missing parts is your own lack of understanding, not the author being lazy or unprofessional. If you were versed enough in English, you would realize that, surprisingly, not everyone's accent manifests itself in a standard manner. Progressing in a language =/= progressing in karate; Some people's accents are barely discernable, while some people actually do sound like the stereotypical Fleur Delacour when they talk. The problem there was that Fleur's accent wasn't actually as bad as fanon makes it, but that in no way means that people don't actually butcher a language that badly when they're learning.

@Grub: True, but it doesn't mesh with the characters that Santi has painted for us. All of the Marauders (sans Peter) are still pretty much as in character in the books as they were in this story, and they all seem to go out of their way to equally please Harry and Nathan. You really think Sirius wouldn't teach Harry some of the more obscure magic if he asked ? Doesn't he have a two-way mirror? Aren't both James and Sirius animagi?

Hell, Dumbledore never taught much of anything to Harry in canon, but canon Harry never asked - for whatever reason, he had no drive to excel, and he was the BWL. Why wouldn't this Harry, who's obviously enraptured with learning magic, ask his grandfather to teach him? Why wouldn't Dumbledore make the offer himself, if not to see him become another Riddle - or Grindelwald ? At the point where his family saw his grades and learned about his situation at school, I think that Santi's Harry could literally have had every one of them teaching him whatever he wanted to know.

 

@Alexyy: You come off sounding like a bitchy 12 year old girl on her first period. I'm sorry I made you re-read a few passages that were, by design, not supposed to be easily understood. Also, thanks for the advice about the accents, my first beta did those, and I'll make sure I send her your linguistic rant so she can make the appropriate changes.

@Amerision: Consider the line nixed.

@Blaise: Glad you don't think the story is terrible. Basically, I needed a plot device to get Harry away from Hogwarts since I had no desire to completely regurgitate canon events. Now I can come up with independent plot lines that aren't completely tied down to what is happening at Hogwarts. Oh, and what Grub said as well.

Edit: @ Hopkins: FF.net is the final version whereas this is more raw and likely to change.

Edit 2 @Blaise: Yeah, I probably could have kept Harry at Hogwarts. I just didn't want him there. I didn't want to write Harry and Nathan do the Philosopher Stone, Chamber of Secrets, ect, ect. If I had to do that, I'd probably just end up abandoning the story out of boredom eventually. This way I can at least keep the fic interesting for me until it gets to GoF. Plus, I've always wanted to write a realistic Krum.

 

/Sarcasm? The accents are :awesome

 

I don't understand why I'm scorned by Justblaise. I got the answer from pureb99, and let's leave it at that. I wanted to meet suport, but unfortunatelly found none.

 

I believe the word you're looking for is support

And to keep it on topic, this story is developing rather nicely. Good take on Krum training an insane amount and somewhat neglecting his schooling.

 

So is Harry going to help Krum pwn his brother in GoF?

 

Hey don't count out Harry yet! He could still be entered into the GoF

 

Don't see why, if anything from what we have seen so far he will help his brother. He loves him, his not having a argument or anything his just going to a different school. If his brother gets into a potentially dangerous situation where he could die I can't see Harry going "Oh unlucky there Nathan, but Krum is from my school and I want to win, so yeah. Oh before I forget, am I in your will?"

Hopefully though there won't be five contestants in the tournament. Four is more then enough.

 

I didn't mean Harry would join the competition, but help Krum practice stuff or strategize.

 

And there you managed to sound like the whiny bitch. Why would you ever intentionally write passages which are difficult to understand? The faults are merely conversations in which you introduced accents to add a bit of dept to the text. Doing the accents incorrectly detracts from that very attempt. You have in effect parodied an entire region's accents while writing a non-humour story and mocked the guy who tried to correct you (even if in an impolite way) - bigoted in every sense of the word.

You made a mistake. Admit it, incorporate the changes (it can only help your story), move on.

 

Alexeyy, theres your suport.

Yeah I get what you mean Chaoticblues, I was just saying it makes more sense for Harry to help out his brother who is in a life threatening situation then help out Krum because of school pride.

 

Ever heard of creative license? Ever read Invisible Man or any book with people from the ghettos? Dialect adds depth to literature, makes the people in the story seem like real people, and adds flow to the story. Santi wanted Harry to come off as a person who could not fully understand German, and he did so by showing the conversation from his point of view and dropped words. Krum and the Dark Arts teacher talked with accents that were barley understandable because, guess what, they are characters that can barely speak English correctly. And since when could you do accents incorrectly? People speak differently dipshit, accent being one of them. Some people interpret phonetics differently as well. And since when have accents been an exact science. The people in movies that can figure out that you've lived in Australia and not New Zealand for 5 years when you were a child are fictional. I don't know about you, but I wasn't tripping over myself to understand that Harry as a character couldn't understand German, and that Krum couldn't speak English. I've had much harder time trying to read real books than take creative license to the extreme with their accents of Black ghettos. And to be honest, do you think he would have portrayed the language barrier as much as it needed to be without being that extreme?

TL;DR
Stop looking at a use of extreme accents as an affront to your writing ethics or whatever and see it for what it is, a literary device.

 

What about because Krum is his first actual friend, and Nathan may have been (a) brainwashed by Ron to think ill of his brother, or (b) still resentful about the fact that his brother left Hogwarts, resulting in a whole bunch of animosity? I think part of the plot will be that tension: loyalty to family versus loyalty to friend(s).

 

Try to understand the discussion before jumping in. The accents came in when people from Durmstrang spoke in English, not when Harry was trying to understand their German (in which accents were not used, although words were blanked out - which I had absolutely no problem with).

Also I had no problem with the accents santi used, my problem was that when he was criticized instead of saying he accepts he might not have done the correct accents and had tried to create his own - he saw a guy's constructive criticism and then lashed out at the chap.

And just for the record, a literary device is something that helps the author share his vision of his story with you. If he's trying to generate a Slavic atmosphere, using phonetically correct accents would help - this is a literary device. Using incorrect accents distances us from what the author is trying to portray and is therefore not a literary device.

 

Pretty sure that's where I mention the German people speaking poor English.

Pretty sure that's where you had a problem with the accents Santi used.

Aaaaand I'm pretty sure that's where I said Santi was using the accents as a means to tell his story.

 

Hmm...there seems to be some confusion over this issue with Alexyy. Bittersweet, when Alexyy said

I didn't notice the period after 'that,' and I read the quote as

I took this as Alexyy bitching about my use of ellipses to show broken speech with the language charm. That was what I was criticizing Alexyy about.

The stuff in my reply about accents wasn't meant to be taken as sarcasm. I will send Alexyy's massive post to my beta so she can make the necessary changes to the story. The accents were done independently of me, so I didn't even give that part a second thought. Situation now understood and resolved?

Good.

@Catman: While I wanted Harry to been seen as having trouble understanding German, the accents were used to denote when someone was speaking in English with an accent. If they are incorrect, I plan on having my beta change them.

 

Ironically, we seem to have stumbled on a language barrier in the midst of the language barrier discussion.

I think there's nothing wrong with the passages like these:

This is actually pretty neat. My first post was about phonetically incorrect accents of the characters of Slavic origin trying to speak in English.

And -- yes, I apologize. A post that lists only the bad things, and doesn't touch the good things at all, could be viewed as rude. Especially as I know I made some sarcastic remarks about the worst parts. I don't participate on the boards much, so that only incurred more wroth because apparently I'm nobody who just came in and started to bitch left and right. That's how I would prefer to act: when I like something and think that the author has very good potential, I immediately focus on how he can improve. Exchanging pleasantries with him will be a waste of time because it is obvious for him and for everyone that he is good. Let others give praise, I give something practical that he can use to move forward. Pleasantries are for wimps who cannot recognise criticism, and a good criticism is a waste when the author has no prospects in literature. Also, The Sancti, I have already given you enough praise when we exchanged messages not long ago. It is also amusing that I criticized you for something you had no hand in, as you have just explained.