Upcoming scheduling

[alt_sinistra]

5th and 7th students:
Revision sessions are now scheduled and posted in the usual places. As usual, additional sessions are possible at mutually agreeable times, and the projection stones not being used in this week's classes are available for brief loans for your own study work. I also have sample questions from past exams available for review.

Upcoming events:
The Astronomy Guild will be hosting another lecture evening on Monday, April 21st at 7pm. This one will focus on the theory of the music of the spheres, and will include both music and charmwork by way of illustration. Students, as this is during holidays, I certainly don't expect any of you to attend. If you'd like to, please see me for more details, and you would be quite welcome.

Comments

Private message to Tosha

[alt_sinistra]

You are very much welcome at the lecture (and in particular, would like to introduce you to someone specific, and we didn't manage it at the wedding. Getting you both in the same place at the same time is surprisingly tricky.)

Raz has already said he's delighted to come. And I've got people I'd like him to be distractingly charming at, beyond the parts where I like having him handy, and where he really was so very good about staying put and being a sensible adult at Hogwarts last time. I also think he's just amused by watching my machinations, as he keeps calling them.

(I understand the Guild. Very much easier for me to deal with than most groups of people, for all they can be cranky, curmudgeonly, and difficult to point in the same direction for more than a minute at a time. Which, given our professional obsession with many of the tools of navigation is rather direly amusing, really.)

Also, I have questions on that latest translation exercise for you, which I'm mostly noting here so I remember to ask you about it tomorrow. (Unless you'd prefer me to drop off my attempts before then.) I think it's an idiom problem, but I'm not entirely sure, because I'm finding the jussive both entirely fascinating and entirely opaque. Anyway, it's not nearly as elegant in phrasing as I think it ought to be, and I can't figure out why.

Re: Private message to Tosha

[alt_antonin]

Oh dear. Yes, that is a mood that English speakers tend to have trouble with; it only exists in English in the barest of fragments, and mostly historical. The use of 'shall' instead of 'will' in certain older forms is among the last surviving pieces of it, actually, although that distinction has mostly fallen out of use. Even English speakers who think about grammar at an exceptionally detailed level are not likely to identify the remnants of the mood, though when it is used improperly the astute will find that the sentence reads incorrectly and they aren't certain why.

The best example I can think of offhand is from Ellandra's soliloquy in Black's Parmenides --

Let he who thinks me weak fear naught until
I strike again. I will have vengeance.
And when my kin's redeemed and I depart
None shall follow.

-- which is, now that I think of it, a double usage: "let he [...] fear", in which 'fear' is in the jussive mood indicating a command aimed at the acolytes, and "none shall follow", likewise a command: unlike "none will follow", which would be Ellandra predicting the future, "none shall follow", in the jussive mood, serves as a command to her followers. And is understood as such, thus setting up Parmenides' misunderstanding in act four.

Does that help at all? I know I did not explain it very well the other night -- I am finding that half the finer points I am teaching you are things I never examined closely, simply absorbed over time.

As to the rest -- yes, I will come, presuming I do not have even more work dumped on my shoulders before then. Which reminds me to thank Mr Diggory; he has meant the difference between sinking and swimming, these past few months.

Re: Private message to Tosha

[alt_sinistra]

I do quite enjoy giving you the excuse to drop into teaching mode, Toshenka, even if I am now rather wanting to spend my evening re-reading Parmenides rather than doing my marking. (I've always been rather fond of that bit of Altheia's in Act One where she's trying to figure out exactly what's going on in the world. I went through a period after Alde introduced me to the play of saying the bit that ends "Some small part shall remain of me." over and over to myself when I got frustrated.)

Your explanation helps rather a lot as well and I will see if I can find time for another go at the translation before tomorrow night. Both directions, mind, because the English is imprecise whether one starts or ends with it.

I do find that I'm finding the subtleties of the grammar more and more intriguing, even if they're not actually relevant to my initial goal of reading astronomical texts. (Or of making comments to you in staff meetings, but really, those are generally linguistically simple. And when I mess them up, you can still guess what I was trying to say.)

I'm reminded of something Georg explained to me, once, about Attic Greek, that there's a voice there (I forget the name for it - medium voice? central voice?) that is about saying you're doing something for your own benefit. Never could decide if that meant the language was designed by people who would have been Slytherins had they been born in other times and other places, or whether it was a language designed by people who had to deal with such, but it always seemed rather a useful tool in a language.

As to Cedric, ah, well, he is decidedly useful, and I'm glad he's been such a help to you. Especially as you've been busier and busier again with one thing and another.