You do seem to be the expert here, but that's not actually my experience. I've been around the continent a fair bit and have no gift whatsoever for learning languages beyond the one I started with (how I have tried), so I've often found myself coercing people into speaking more English than they want to, and it's not rare for them to use native forms of the simplest words. I doubt it's conscious and I'm not sure of the reason for this - knowing that they will be understood, perhaps, or something to increase their own comfort levels when they're struggling slightly.

More directly though, I was in a seminar just this afternoon (Heidegger) with a German professor; she didn't say 'yes' once, only 'ja'.

 

Noticed that to. Words that are more said out of habit than for their actual meaning - such as "yes" to mean 'I understand you said something' as opposed to 'I agree' - and exclamations tend to come out in one's natural language. Alexeyy did however may an exception for the latter case..

 

This is interesting. I have also seen with my own eyes the situation you describe. It usually happens when their English level is abysmally bad, like when they have real trouble wording their thoughts because their vocabulary is just too small.

For example: "Do you-- er .. er -- how's that-- how's that in English-- ". And they click their fingers to help remember the right word. The whole situation is as bad as if they were stuttering and it's very embarrassing. The other party would start trying to guess what they wanted to ask. And then: "No, no, no, no! It's not that. It's a.. it's a..." And so on.

But I have never seen somebody comfortable with English resorting to this guessing game. If they don't know an English word, which they meant to say, they usually can phrase differently whatever they were saying. How confident were the people in your situation?

And I agree with Vlad.

Ok, so then: the poorer one's level of English the heavier is his accent. To tell the truth, I have never thought about using that idea in fiction. It could be a real pain though -- I don't know if I can portray two characters with different levels of English -- my English is not just good enough...

 

A very nice analysis on accents in HP.

 

Personally I was humbled by your knowledge of phonetic terminology (I only studied phonetics in the context of two Semitic languages and that was ten years ago in school), but you have to realize your thoughtful criticism and advice went right over the audience's head and only caused antagonism because they thought you were showing off. It's called geeking out and you can safely do it only with friends who share your interests.

For the record, my mother's tongue is Russian and I agree with what you said. I'll even look up those words I don't know. Only thing I thought wasn't entirely correct was mid-sentence language switching: if the second language is a foreign language and you're thinking in one language, translating in your head and speaking in another, then you won't switch mid-sentence unless it's an emotional outburst. But if a foreign language is becoming a language you think in and you don't need to translate anymore, then you can speak in a kind of pidgin. I'm trilingual and for a while I would sometimes speak sentences that are a mix of several languages. I know it's common, but maybe it doesn't happen if you learn a foreign language as an adult because it can never become a native language for you (unless you're gifted).

 

I won't be focusing on Nathan's PoV very often, and definitely not while Harry is at Durmstrang. Nathan, Lily, James, and others will communicate with Harry by letter to keep him up to date about things. It's not the best plot device, but it's the best i've got without giving Harry the charmed two way mirrors, and I'm not sure I want to do that.

 

You hated Mark Twain's Huck Finn, didn't you? Oh, well that is if you read it. Obviously im not saying this author is as good as the great Mark Twain, but for you to make such blanket statements is blasphemy. You can hold your opinions on wither or not you wish to read something that purposefully denotes an accent or a form of spelling, but do not think that your opinion makes this a "serious issue". Not only does it not, but the fact you have no idea what your talking about gets in the way. Go read Huck Finn. Seriously, then come back with a whole new found look on the way writing is perceived.

 

If you plan on making Nathan do mostly what Harry did in-canon, you could just have Nathan explain it to him when Harry comes home for the holidays/summer. I can't see Nathan or Harry writing each other every few weeks, maybe every 2-3 months, sure. But they're still kids and they lived with each other for 11 years and that's the time most 'magical raised' kids want to get out of their home and learn magic. Lily would be the only one I see writing them every few weeks to check on them, James, Sirius and them would probably just let them be.

This is just from what I remember in-canon. I barely remember any kids sending letters detailing how it was going at Hogwarts and the only letter(s) I can remember a parent sending was Molly... and that was just a Howler.

 

Nice chapter. Kira scene made me laugh at the unexpected smackdown.

One point though - she shouldn't say Merlin. That seems to me to be a unique expression for Brits (and maybe other Anglo magical cultures). As she's neither from nor studying in Britain, it doesn't make sense for her to say it.

Otherwise, good.

 

I feared that, like most of fanfic writers, you'd fail spectacularly at creating convincing and reasonable OCs, especially in new-school quantity. You didn't. I just hope that you'll keep updates as frequent as they are.

About the last update:

missing word, I guess "see"

grinned

One point about Kira - I'd expect Greeks to have their own school of magic, probably on Olympus or somewhere close to.

 

Though the bit you describe isn't all that problematic, I suppose you might consider moving the three paragraphs starting with "Quidditch at Durmstrang..." all the way to the infirmary scene, around the spot that Krum returns from his Quidditch practice. That entire sequence is just Harry thinking about things he's already seen, so it isn't tied too strongly to any particular part of this sub-chapter.

If you did that, though, you'd probably want to consider reworking the first library paragraph slightly; it would still stick out a bit against Harry's thoughts about Krum's friendship. Ultimately, I think this paragraph is the real source of what you see as an abrupt transition.

Minor correction: There is a missing period at the end of the second paragraph.

 

Nice update & addition to the story. A small error I noticed.

Consider revising, something along the lines of "Harry was able to argue..." as opposed to what you currently have.

 

Staligrad was renamed Volgograd two decades prior to what is attributed to Karkaroff, as part of the climax of Khrushev's 'de-Stalinization' program. It's possible for the wizarding side of it to not go along with that, but then why would they have accepted 'Stalingrad' in the first place? The city is over three centuries older than Stalin.

Or is this some sort of indication that the Russian wizarding world has a Stalinist undercurrent even so long after his death?

 

Nice catch. It's an error on my part. In the original version of that scene, the part with Karkaroff's thoughts on Dumbledore weren't there. That part just came to me as I was checking the scene for errors before posting it.

When I wrote the city, I wasn't really paying attention, and I goofed. I meant use Leningrad, which was re-named St. Petersburg in July(?) of 1991. Anyway, it would be recent enough of a change that Karkaroff would still use the old name of the city.

@Vlad: Yeah, good point about the Merlin thing. I've changed it to Zeus, which would make more sense for a witch from Greece to say.

@KrzaQ: I suppose there could be a school in Greece, JKR's Famous Wizard Cards certainly have a lot of Greek Mythology refrences in them. In fact, it might actually be good for the background of Kira's character for me to mention a very private Greek School, and explain why Kira wasn't accept there. Thanks for the idea

 

Hum.
Not sure, maybe i'm in a crappy mood or something. Normally I enjoy reading your chapters a great deal, but this one eurgh.

The beginning is stilted and flat - too much dry summary. In trying to make the scene move faster you skip over too many details making the whole thing read like one of those textbooks they assign you to read chapters from and you stop after the you've re-read the first page three or for times without anything sinking in.

It's all so impersonal, just doesn't draw me in at all. You talk about Harry being picked on, but it you don't make me feel anything for him - none of his feelings come through! I mean you might as well be talking about goblin rebellions (but without the funny names, mores the pity).

...sorry for the rant, but honestly the first half of the new section was painful for me to read. It picks up after Harry gets attacked, but it still feels off. Too many drastic changes: too much happens - Harry's new found mastery of German, Harry the transfiguration apprentice, Krum the dark-arts prodigy, Harry's relationship with the librarian, the attack, Karkarof & Dumbledore - the behind the scenes, Krum's psychotic girlfriend. All of these have so much potential and you gloss over most of them in one or two sentences! Give us details! The devil is in them.

Another point: if everyone is afraid of Krum, why do they laugh at him?

I mean so far you've worked hard at establishing that Harry is fallible and has real trouble with languages. You've also introduced Krum as a language instructor for him. Awesome - that's a good excuse for them to interact and for us to learn more about the both of them. But now in the first sentence you throw the whole thing away with "and then Harry learned to speak German."

The biggest problem is that you are telling us too much, and not showing us enough.
.....meh, sorry I'm too tired just now to go to much further, and you probably don't want to hear it anyway, but:

I would scrap this, and instead have a couple of scenes that maybe have a professor nod approvingly when Harry manages to answer correctly in less broken German. Or have a language session with Victor during which his prowess at the Dark Art's comes out or any of a dozen other little scenes - but give us details, not an overview. Show us what's happening, don't just say it happened.

 

I'm very sorry that I haven't been able to beta your story this week, but I will say this:

Duke has touched upon an important point:

You're telling us what happens instead of writing to us what happens. Time has passed, yet you continue on as though there's no break in the timeline and everything is clear to us. Not only is it not, but we have trouble linking "before Harry" to "after Harry." Give us at least a scene or two in which Harry gains the prowess for X he is shown to have.

That's the way.

 

You start of writing "Lady Shluga" for the first several instances and then write "Sluga" for the remainder.

I can also see that there's a lot of 'tell' instead of 'show' in comparison to previous installments. The addition of a few short scenes could help that.

 

I don't know. If someone like Ron could stop Harry from hanging out with his own brother, I can't see him tolerating a character as annoying as Kira for someone he barely even knows yet. I honestly hope that she plays a minimal role, because Harry having to put up with it means the reader having to as well. If Ron can separate two blood brothers from spending time with each other, this will end whatever budding friendship Viktor has with Harry unless she gets squared away, and quick. It wouldn't make sense for Harry to take any of that when he couldn't even handle someone as obnoxious as Ron.

 

Kira, however, is a lot more intelligent than Ron though - making her more tolerable. If Harry put her in place with a firm talk and couple of spells I think the interactions would improve.

But on the other hand, Kira could make a good competitor for Harry driving him to do better if handled right. For an OC, I like her.

I'm a fan of the story so far, but I wasn't too crazy over the beginning of the update. It seemed overly choppy. One to three paragraphs of catch-up is generally good, but this one had nine. Personally, I'd move the whole library/hospital scene up to the next chapter and flesh out all of the ideas you have going in those nine paragraphs.

Looking forward to the next Kira/Harry interaction and hope we can see some more action. The Quirrell/Harry fight scenes were one of the stronger points of the past chapters and the scenes are starting to lull without seeing Harry actually doing any spell-casting. Who knows though? Maybe the unknown attacker will pick it up though.

Edit: Damn it, too slow.

 

Much better. I was especially glad to see the confrontation with the third years instead of just reading about it. It reads much smoother and we get a greater sense of what's happening and Harry's feelings about it.