#and for us specifically on multiple accounts he would ask if his pronunciation was correct

[cerealandchoccymilk]

oh shit. completely forgot about namehunting....

[lightsburnbrite]

Things We Do for Love: Part 2

(Third part to Such a Thrill and The Devil is in the Details)

As the months passed, Leon slowly started to form normalcy. His apartment resembled more of a bachelor’s pad as Karina’s personal items were removed. In an effort to get his mind off of things, it wasn’t uncommon for two or three of Leon’s friends to come and stay for weeks at a time and he genuinely appreciated the company but it didn’t replace the fact that Karina was gone. Mathea, never one to miss an opportunity, soon moved herself in and resumed her role as the doting girlfriend.

“Ha! I’ve found her.”

Leon let the basketball rebound off the floor before holding it still. Putting the net up in the living room seemed like both his best and worst idea to date. “What? Found who?”

“Karina.” Sebastian called back out. He wasn’t Leon’s official agent, but he acted in a managerial capacity in addition to being Leon’s close friend. “She’s listed on the website as the Associate Curator of European Art.”

Leon put the ball down and walked over to the sofa where Sebastian was lounging. He stopped short, trying to decide if he would feel better knowing where Karina was or if he would feel worse. “What website?”

“AGO.” Sebastian looked up from the screen at Leon. “Does Marius really not know where she is?”

Leon shook his head. “No. Their parents haven’t come out and said it but he figured they’d cut him off too if he tried to get in touch with her. What does AGO stand for?”

“Art Gallery of Ontario.” He turned his laptop towards Leon. “As in Ca-na-da, eh?”

Leon smirked at Sebastian’s over pronunciation but he couldn’t help but smile at Karina’s picture placed alongside her bio. She looked essentially the same, her hair might have been a bit longer and she had it straightened in this picture, but she looked genuinely happy. Leon knew that Karina had a “professional smile” that she used to counteract her natural inclination to frown but the smile she wore in her picture proved her to be happy and proud of this new position.

“Oh damn,”

Leon turned back to Sebastian who was on his phone now. “What now?”

“Looks like she’s got a new…” Sebastian hesitated. “Well, have a look.”

Sebastian had pulled facebook up on his phone but he didn’t know the person who’s profile it was. It was a picture of a group of six people at what looked to be an outdoor wedding reception, the bride and groom were placed in the middle with two people on either side. Karina stood to the very right, tucked neatly against the side of man who looked to be about the same age, her hand resting on his chest while his was placed low on her hip. Again, Karina smiled brightly while the man had more of a smirk and that instantly put Leon off him. He had been hoping maybe she was just the man’s plus one as a favor but then he read the caption and his heart sank.

Happy Siblings Day to these two weirdos. Loved having everyone together again at my wedding. Loved it even more that we finally got to meet baby brother’s new girlfriend who is the sweetest!

“What’s his name?” Leon looked over to Sebastian again. “Can you tell?”

Sebastian took his phone back and shrugged. “Look at the tagged names. Obviously we know Karina’s and if they are siblings then look for last names that are the same. Here we go…Cosmo is your guy. Or, I guess it’s more like her guy. Heh. What the fuck kind of name is Cosmo.”

Leon groaned but curiosity eventually got the better of him. At various points throughout the day, he was looking through multiple forms of social media belonging to a floppy haired hipster that had somehow caught Karina’s eye. He was mainly active on instagram, posting random landscapes and other seemingly artistic compositions. Leon was relieved that he didn’t see any pictures of Karina on there but when he came across a few pictures of Elsa, that was somehow worse. It had now become a serious relationship in his mind because Karina had allowed her beloved dog around this man.

Karina had effectively vanished from the face of the Earth in the 14 months since she left Leon. At first, Leon thought she had just blocked him but when she ‘liked’ one of his posts about a charity endeavor he and Joshua were working on, Leon realized she had just been silent. That initial ‘like’ broke the seal, it seemed, and just like that, she became active again. There were a few selfies and a few more pictures of Elsa but then came the pictures of Elsa and the new boyfriend. It wasn’t a blatantly obvious picture of the two of them, but he recognized the fragment of a roman numeral tattoo he had on his arm from other pictures.

While laying in bed one night, Leon was scrolling through pictures. Mathea moved closer and rested her head on his shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, um..” Leon cleared his throat and thought of how he could explain that he was essentially stalking the new love interest of his estranged wife. “Karina has a new boyfriend.”

Mathea took his phone and looked at pictures of the two of them and sneered. “He’s got a big nose. Whatever, you’re hotter.”

It made Leon feel at least a bit better to hear her say that, but there was now way Mathea could be objective. He had decided to give Karina a call and see if she would actually answer. Karina had donated a sizable amount to his charity and calling to say thank you seemed to be a good reason. To his surprise, she answered.

“Hi Leon, what’s up?”

He instantly smiled. “Hey, Maus. I, uh, wanted to say thank you for your donation. That was really generous of you.”

“Of course.” She held the phone away and coughed. “You and Joshua are doing great things, I’m happy to help.”

“Right…” He nodded even though she wouldn’t be able to see him. He wanted to say it was good to hear her voice, that he was happy she was ok and hoped she was doing well but all of a sudden, the words came before he had the chance to stop himself. “Mathea found your wedding dress the other day. I guess I could ship it to you?”

“Oh, um, honestly, I don’t want it back. You can do what you want with it.” She hesitated. “Listen, Leon, I was thinking it’s time that we finalize things. We’re kinda in limbo right now and I think we both just need to move on. I’m going to be in Munich next week, would you be able to meet with our lawyers?”

Leon let out a sigh. She was right, but it still hurt him to hear it. “Um, yeah. We can do that.”

They sat in a meeting room around a circular table and had an unsurprisingly civil conversation.

“I see that you maintained separate accounts so that makes the division of assets somewhat more straightforward.” Leon’s lawyer shuffled some papers before addressing Karina specifically. “Will you be petitioning for spousal support, Ms. Müller?”

Karina shook her head. “No. I’m not asking for anything, I just want this to be finalized so we can move on.”

His lawyer nodded. “And you are fine with returning the ring and vacating the residence?”

“My client has already returned the ring and has maintained a residence in Toronto for the past year.” Karina’s lawyer interjected now. “We are mainly concerned with making sure that your client will not be trying to get anything from Ms. Müller.”

“I see there is a dog, was the animal obtained together-”

“Elsa belongs to Karina. I’m not contesting that.” Leon spoke up. “Any piece of artwork too, it’s all hers.”

“Ok,” Karina’s lawyer responded. “Both parties agree to part with what they entered the marriage with. Is this correct?”

“I don’t know…I guess i just feel like…” Leon sighed heavily as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I feel like we’re rushing things along.”

Karina sat perfectly still in the chair next to him, straight as a pin. “Leon, we’ve been separated for over a year, it’s time for us to move on.”

Leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, Leon sighed again and tried to wrap his mind around how their relationship had progressed to this point. “Alright. What do you need me to sign?”

Once the papers were signed and notarized, their lawyers shook hands and departed leaving Leon and Karina to sit in silence.

“Do, um…” Leon was getting frustrated with how hesitant he was feeling. “Would you want to get dinner tonight?”

Karina opened her mouth before frowning slightly. “Leon, that sounds very nice but I’m not sure if that’s the best idea.”

“Yeah, I get that. It’s just this feels like a shitty way to close things.” He shrugged. “I thought this would be an ok way to make it up to you.”

She started to say that there was no need to make anything up to her, she held no ill will towards him but ultimately she thought better of it and simply nodded. Karina would have rather done anything else than to sit down to dinner with him but considered it one last good faith effort before moving on completely.

Leon set the reservations at the restaurant of the Charles hotel where Karina was staying. He had done so out of convenience for Karina, she knew that, but she also knew he had probably forgotten the time when they sat in the same restaurant and she confessed that she was hopelessly in love with him.

With a sigh, she pulled a simple black shirt dress from the closet and made sure it hadn’t gotten too wrinkled in travel. After deciding that her hair and makeup were fine, Karina checked at the front desk but was shown to the table despite Leon having not arrived yet.

She glanced over the menu but didn’t see anything that really jumped out at her so she let her eyes wander around the restaurant. Karina looked up towards the entrance just in time to see Leon holding the door open for Mathea who was wearing the same dress Karina wore to their wedding. Seeing the two of them walk in together caused Karina’s stomach to plummet to the floor. She saw a server pass and she held up one finger to flag him down. “I’m sorry, could I get a double vodka soda with a slice of lemon, please? Thanks.”

She stood as they were ushered to the table, avoiding any sort of eye contact as they sat down.

Leon smiled and placed a hand on her forearm. “You look great, Mausi.”

Karina smiled but more out of a desire to be polite. Mathea being there to begin with put her on edge, but the display of affection from Leon only made it worse.

Mathea didn’t pass up the opportunity to look her over from head to toe, ending her gaze with a smirk. “Do you ever wear anything with color?”

“Rarely.” Leon had to stop himself from laughing as Karina delivered the line deadpan.

Her expression turning to a sneer, Mathea would not let Karina get away with besting her. “You look like a nun only there’s the problem of your devil worship-”

“Mathea, enough.” Leon cut in now, attempting to keep a somewhat civil conversation.

“It’s nice to see you as well, Mathea.” Karina offered a kind but entirely forced smile. “A bit unexpected if I do say so, especially in that dress.”

Mathea grinned. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? I needed to have it taken in, I was practically swimming in it before!”

Leon immediately ducked his head. “Sorry, I thought you’d be bringing…sorry.”

“Bringing who?” She pressed him, curious as to who Leon would have had in mind.

He inhaled deeply. “I thought your boyfriend would have come with you.”

“Nope. Just me.” Karina forced a smile. “No boyfriend.”

“Hmm.” Mathea smiled more smugly now. “That’s a shame. Leon and I just got back from Ibiza, we had a great time together with Marius.”

“Lovely.” Karina nodded slightly, attempting not to bristle at the mention of her brother. “Glad you had fun.”

Leon went on about various events and goings on, seemingly oblivious to Mathea’s desire to agitate Karina and Karina’s subsequent distress.

“You know,” Mathea looked over to Leon and smiled fondly. “I’ve always wanted to see what you call ‘the big house’. I’ve always wondered of it really was that big.”

Leon hesitated, knowing that would be a sore spot. “No, that’s not really-”

“It's being rented, actually,” Karina hadn’t intended it to be a jab but the shocked look plastered on Mathea’s face was incredible satisfying. “About eight months ago.”

Mathea shook her head. “No, you had no right to do that without consulting us. What if we wanted to use it? I thought it would make a nice setting for a wedding.”

“A wedding…” She spoke softly and did her best not to show her irritation that Mathea was even part of this discussion. “It's my house, my estate. I discussed my thoughts with Olga and she was ready to move on as well. Apparently Marwin told her that he didn’t want me to feel weighed down by the house and should sell it if I wanted to. I thought about that but I didn't want to part with it because of my memories with Marwin there.”

It wasn't intentional, but Karina enjoyed watching Leon flinch when she mentioned wanting to hold on to her memories of Strohmann.    

“But you were married. Leon should have gotten half.” Mathea was practically scowling now. “Or spousal support.”

Leon held his hands up. “No. There is no reason for me to ask anything of Karina just because she’s worth more than I am. I’m not going to be petty or vindictive because you want a bigger place to live.”

The waiter had arrived with Karina’s drink and prepared to take their orders as well when she stopped him. “Thank you, but I think I’m actually just going to take this to my room. If you could charge their meal to my room as well?”

Slightly dumbfounded, the waiter nodded as Karina stood and raised her glass to Mathea and Leon. “Enjoy.”

Back in her room, Karina drained her glass quickly. The alcohol hit her hard on an empty stomach but it wasn’t enough to numb her yet. She grabbed the room service menu and ordered a dinner she would appreciate much more than anything at Sofia’s and a bottle of Prosecco to wash it down with.

Leon was visibly sullen for the rest of the evening which only frustrated Mathea.

“What are you so pissed about?” Mathea sat in the passenger seat and sulked.

It took Leon a minute to respond. “You could have pretended to be nice.”

“Sorry? I just figured we’re never going to like each other and we’re never going to see her again so why bother?” She reached over and rested her hand on his thigh. “Besides, we can actually talk about getting married now.”

Leon didn’t respond. He figured it would be better to wait to tell her that he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to get married again.

[emmatrustsno-one]

On the dual-layered representation of British class in Harry Potter

You should go to my blog and read my post about food in Harry Potter and my two part essay on the British class system before you read this, as it won’t make sense otherwise!

In this post I will explore how there are two class systems at work in Harry Potter and how they revolve around blood status and power relations. On the one hand there is the wizarding one: pure bloods represent the upper-class, half-bloods the middle-class and muggleborns (and by extension muggles) the working-class. Muggles might be said to represent the modern ‘underclass’ that I discussed in my essay: the bottom layer of society that has never worked (or in wizarding terms, has never had magical power). On the other hand there is also the real British class system. That exists, encoded into the characters, both in fictional terms, in the muggle world, and also in real, meta terms, i.e. although Ron, for example, never lives in the muggle world, he is still encoded with a real/muggle world class, which is only visible to the reader. In this post I will show how class is encoded using only general knowledge of the characters and specific references from The Philosopher’s Stone. I will discuss references from the other books at a later date.

Let’s start with the Weasleys, then. The Weasleys are pure bloods. They are on the sacred 28. According to the wizarding class system they are upper-class. They are magically privileged. They have access to unlimited magical knowledge, they are guaranteed a place at a prestigious school (provided they are not squibs, presumably), they are educated to the highest level available in the wizarding world, apart from Fred and George, but they chose not to finish their NEWTS. They are able to access jobs in the government. Bill and Charlie have had the opportunity to live and work abroad. The family knows important people in the wizarding world, like the minister, Dumbledore and Mad-Eye.

Moreover, whatever the books might say, it is certain that being raised in a muggle family will affect your progress at school, at least at first. Simply by having spent 11 years absorbing the wizarding world, by default, pure-bloods like the Weasleys are going to have a head start. Half-bloods will also have an advantage over muggleborns, but not as much as pure-bloods do. Because of this it is sensible to assume that muggleborns, and to a lesser extent half-bloods, will have to work harder at school to achieve as highly as pure-bloods. The work ethic difference between Ron and Hermione says this in volumes. He is lazy and doesn’t listen in lessons or do his work properly, but he still gets good marks. Hermione works herself into the ground trying to close the gap and ensure she can reach her potential. Also, Crabbe and Goyle pass their exams at the end of the year, despite being portrayed as stupid.

Ron and his siblings never have to worry about not knowing what’s going on, or feel like an outsider, in the way Harry and Hermione do. We see Harry feel stupid at his ignorance multiple times. While waiting for the sorting he wonders whether he will have to get a rabbit out of the hat, which shows that, not only is he clueless, but he is even disadvantaged by the prior knowledge he thinks he has because that’s not even correct.

Even though nobody seems to say this is in fandom, the Weasleys definitely show signs of (unconsciously) seeing muggles as inferior. For example, while talking to Harry on the train, Ron says his mum has a second cousin who’s an accountant, but the family never talk about them. They act like that person doesn’t exist just because they are the one non-wizard in the family. Towards the end of the book, Ron makes fun of Hermione for forgetting she can start a fire without wood. It’s light-hearted and there’s no malice meant, but nevertheless he is making fun of the ignorance she has due to being muggleborn and demonstrating that because of the way he thinks, in this world he is privileged.

In real terms, the Weasleys are working-class, however, and not just because they are poor. Yes, being poor is a big part of it, but it’s more than that. I’m not sure about other countries, but in Britain having red hair and lots of children is a direct reference to a stereotype of catholic families, especially in Scotland, who often have red hair due to celtic roots and have large families due to not using contraception. Having lots of kids is also a fact of the working-class in general, as you might have seen if you looked at the photos I posted in my last blog. They do tend to have more children than they can afford (of course, I am generalising for clarity – no offense is meant). Linked in with this is their clothes. Due to being poor, working-class people, especially at the time JKR conceived HP, often wore used clothes or clothes that belonged to their siblings, and often they were damaged or worn out. When Malfoy says “red hair and hand-me-down robes, no need to ask who you are”, he could have easily said “working-class” or “catholic” instead of “a Weasley”.

In addition, when we first meet Ron his nose is dirty, which alludes to his not being quite as clean as others, and rather than having money to buy lunch, he has been given some dry sandwiches by his mother. He doesn’t like corned beef, but he’s got it probably because that’s what they can afford: it is a cheaper, processed meat. The fact that the sandwiches are dry shows that the bread was perhaps not fresh and neither was the corned beef. The state of the sandwiches and the fact that Ron doesn’t even like what she’s given him, show that Mrs. Weasley is not just poor, but also so busy that she isn’t on top of things at home. While Ron and Harry are talking on the train, Ron almost lets it slip that his parents can’t afford things but stops himself and gets embarrassed. As Harry points out, there’s nothing wrong with not being able to afford something, but Ron is under pressure from two things here. 1. To maintain his privilege in the wizarding world, he needs to downplay the fact of his poverty in front of other wizards, since privilege is usually so bound up with wealth. 2. He has the same kind of strong pride that the real world working-class had/have and doesn’t want people to know his family have anything not to be proud of. When you don’t have much, dignity is about all you’ve got.

Another element showing the Weasleys are real world working-class is the homemade Christmas presents, because they can’t afford to spend much. The battle inside Ron between being proud but not showing his lack of wealth is also evident when Fred and George pull him up on his reluctance to wear his Christmas jumper. However, he is proud, so ultimately he puts it on, despite his worries. It isn’t a coincidence that Fred and George are more consistently and vocally proud and unembarrassed about their real world working-class status than their siblings and that they also end up taking a non-academic route in life.

Percy is an interesting character to look at in class terms because he doesn’t have the pride that keeps Ron and the others close to the family. He is far more worried about losing privilege because of their real world working-class status. This will come up more in later posts about the other books, but in PS we see that Percy, unlike any of the other Weasley children, calls his parents ‘mother’ and ‘father’. Use of language is an important part of creating class boundaries, e.g. upper-class and some middle-class children in Britain call their parents ‘mother’ and ‘father’. Working-class and most middle-class children call their parents a short, monosyllabic name, usually, though not always, ‘mum’ and ‘dad’. In calling his parents ‘mother’ and ‘father’, Percy is showing that he is aware how differences in class are shown and he is aspiring to be ‘better’. He is ambitious and wants to work in government, and he knows it will be harder as an adult to profit from his privilege unless he has obvious markers of it. Therefore, he adopts vocabulary he knows the upper-class use. Also, Percy protests a lot more than Ron at having to wear his Christmas jumper. I feel sorry for him when Fred and George try to force him into it – they and Ron aren’t as ambitious as him. It isn’t such a big deal for them if they fail to get a good reputation with other pure-blood (i.e. upper-class) wizards as it is for Percy – he needs to make contacts and show he can mix with the people at the top, if his dreams of working in government are to come true. He does behave badly in later books, but it’s not as simple as “he’s an arsehole”. He is trying to stop himself being held back by his class.

The language the Weasleys use in general often portrays them as real world working-class. Unlike most other pure-blood families, who fit the upper-class stereotype of crazy names, the Weasleys’ children all have simple, salt-of-the-earth names that are common for working-class people. Even Arthur and Molly do. Ginny is an exception, of course. Perhaps Mrs. Weasley named her at the height of the ‘give your daughter a crazy name’ trend, where names like ‘Keisha’ and ‘Dixie’ were popular. They also don’t really use very sophisticated vocabulary or structures that would be called ‘posh’ in Britain. Their pronunciation and accent, however, is not written as dialect though. This might be due in part to them being from the south and the countryside – as I’ll discuss later, speech gets less standard the more north you go. It also suggests that they have aspirations beyond their class – affecting a ‘posher’ voice to give the impression of being ‘better’. Occasionally you see Ron say things like “nope”, which supports that idea that there is non-standard speech under their façade. Conversely, it reminds you that they are, by some standards (wizarding ones), upper-class, but they are choosing not to conform.

We don’t see their house until CoS, but once we do we find out that it is barely adequate for their needs, cramped and untidy. As I’ve said before, they also eat foods associated most with the working-class, such as boiled potatoes, pie and processed meats.

Hermione is almost the opposite of Ron. In the real world she is middle-class, probably upper middle. We know this not just because her parents are dentists. Her whole manner on the train screams it but it’s also somehow very subtle. It’s hard to articulate it. She is mature and disapproves of childish behaviour, meaning she has probably been brought up to behave reservedly. She is confident and assertive in a way suggesting she has lived a comfortable life without many things to worry about being criticised about. She clearly has faith of her convictions and doesn’t suffer from the self-doubt that characterises working-class children.

She is described as having a “sniffy” voice, which is another way of saying she talks to people with her nose in the air, as if looking down at them arrogantly. The way she unashamedly blurts out about how much she knows and can do, and also bluntly criticises Ron’s attempted spell, also screams privilege. Working-class people tend to be more cagey or modest about their knowledge and abilities, not wanting to seem superior to others and make them feel bad. Hermione clearly has no awareness of how her boasting could make others feel, especially if they are less fortunate. Higher class people tend to be like this because they don’t have much experience of mixing with people who haven’t had the same opportunities they have. The way she voices her shock that Harry hasn’t researched himself – he hasn’t had the education to know how to do that. The way she ignores what Ron’s saying and talks over him. Something about the way she words things, especially at first, before her status in the wizarding world is fully established, sounds posh.

It is Hermione who points out that Ron has dirt on his nose, even though he has been sitting with Harry for ages. Harry never mentioned it because as a working-class person it wasn’t as noticeable to him and he would have been less likely to want to criticise and make Ron feel self-conscious. Cleanliness and appearance are more important to Hermione, and she lacks the tact needed to talk nicely to an underprivileged child. The fact that she changes into her robes so early suggests that she is familiar with the process of travelling to boarding school and also that she values formality, which is another marker of the higher classes.

Her boasting on the train isn’t the only allusion to a good education. She is bookish to the point of considering huge tomes “light-reading”, understands how to use a library to do research and how to revise for exams, is bursting with independent enquiry and good at writing essays. To have these capabilities at 11 strongly suggest she went to a private primary school. Her possession of these skills is the reason she chastised Harry for not researching himself – it’s normal to her. But Harry, he’s 11 and went to his local state primary school; independent thought was stifled at home; he had no chance to do that. Her bookishness also shows that she understands that knowledge is power.

However, as a muggleborn, she is in the wizarding working-class. Moreover, she is acutely aware of it. She has had no prior access to magical knowledge. As soon as she found out she was going to Hogwarts she bought many books and spent the summer reading up and trying to offset that disadvantage. She often feels out of place and like an outsider. This is another dimension to her changing into robes early – she wanted to show she belonged. It’s also why she kept nagging everyone else to change – she had changed to fit in but it wasn’t working as no-one else looked like her yet. Her boasting on the train stemmed from anxiety as well as privilege. She wanted to convince everyone, including herself, that she merited her place in the wizarding world. As other fans have pointed out, this is why she works so hard and places school at the top of her priority list, and why she fears academic failure: she wants to prove she belongs, close the gap between herself and those with wizarding blood and to have access to the top echelons of society, because she knows from experience how important that is. When she says, “we could have all been killed – or worse, expelled”, she doesn’t just mean expelled from school, she means expelled from this layer of society, back into the muggle world, where she would be forever working-class in wizarding terms. Losing her chance to be able to slowly climb the social ladder is worse than death, because it would trap her at the bottom forever. While the first years are waiting to be sorted all Harry could hear was Hermione gabbing on about what she had been doing to prepare. She had prepared because she knew she was disadvantaged, and she was babbling because she was nervous because she felt like an outsider.

Getting on to the Dursleys and Harry then, notice how their mantra is “don’t ask questions”. Asking questions means independent thought and learning new things. The very concept of learning is discouraged in Harry all his life and his environment raises him to not be active learner – a working-class tendency. He is also working-class in other ways. He wears hand-me-down, worn clothes which don’t fit and he has no material wealth. His housing is poor at first – cramped, dark, inadequate and dusty, with insects. Moreover, he occupies such poor housing even though there is a perfectly good, empty room elsewhere in the house (like the large houses higher class people live in while the lower classes have to live in one or two rooms). He is under-fed and his health has been affected: he says he is small and skinny for age. He wears sellotaped glasses, therefore his access to healthcare is limited. He is made to do manual work around the house, such as cooking. His options in life are very limited: he can be in his cupboard, school or Mrs. Figg’s house. The Dursleys talk about him and how they manage his life like he’s too stupid to understand. Harry blushes when Hagrid says he will get him a birthday present – he is so used to not getting anything he feels awkward if he does. Since class relations are power relations, the Dursleys feel that if they keep Harry downtrodden enough they will stamp his abilities out of him. That’s also why Harry, when shopping in Diagon Alley, is looking forward to getting a wand most of all – wands are what gives wizards power. Harry senses that a wand, or power, is a key step to moving up the class ladder.

  In wizarding world terms Harry’s class is unique. He has magical blood. His ancestry isn’t as pure as some – his mother was a witch, but she was a half-blood and his father’s name isn’t pure enough for the sacred 28. Harry isn’t as pure a pure blood as some might like, but is pure enough to be upper-class. Think of it like the main royal family and the rest of the upper-class. Some people are upper-class even though they are only distantly related to the monarch. They are all upper-class, but the monarch and their immediate family are even ‘better’ than the rest of the class – they are the top layer of society. So Harry is upper-class, then, and yet he has next to no power or privilege because he has been brought up as working-class (a muggle). He worries often about not knowing what’s going on at Hogwarts, for example. This shows how silly the entire class system is – Harry is not any better than others by nature. His upper-class blood is useless without the upbringing that goes with it. This is a reminder that upper-class blood does not equate to a divine birth right, however much the upper-class would like to think it does. He does have some privilege, however, once he re-enters the wizarding world. For one, he knows Dumbledore, who is in a position of power. Remember that knowing Dumbledore is not the same as just knowing a headmaster of any school. He is solely in charge of education in the wizarding world. People would have made him minister for magic if he had wanted. He has more power than any other wizard, by the books’ own admission.

The Dursleys themselves, in real world terms, are middle-class. Petunia looks down her nose at people, spies on the neighbours and worries about keeping up appearances. She also acts superior to Lily, even though we later find out that deep down, in wizarding terms, she feels very inferior.  When talking to Dudley, she refers to herself and Vernon as ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ even when he is grown up, which is characteristic of middle-class families. Vernon works in management and likes shouting at people and seeming important. He also barks orders a lot, which shows he is used to having power over people. They compare Dudley competitively with other children. Whereas Harry is denied the basics, Dudley is entitled: he throws tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants, says “shan’t”, and generally demands material wealth. He also eats extremely well, as do they all. Vernon and Dudley’s weight contrasting with Harry’s is like Mr. Bumble contrasting with Oliver Twist. Dudley is going to a private, possibly public secondary school, whilst Harry is going to the local state school. You can tell Smeltings is at least private due the silly uniform, the fact that he has a place there – suggesting you have to be on some list, or pass some test - and the fact that the school encourages casual violence to build character, much as public schools do.

In some ways, the difference between Harry and Dudley is a good thing, Harry needed that start in life to become the person he is. It’s why he forms such loyal bonds with those important to him, such as Hagrid. It’s why he’s brave enough to make sacrifices. Harry understands muggles and muggleborns because he didn’t have a wizarding upper-class upbringing, and that is what makes him the hero of the story.

In wizarding world terms, however, the Dursleys are as low on the class scale as humans come. They live in constant fear of the power of those higher than them, and not without reason: their first contact with the wizards in almost 11 years ends in their child being badly hurt for wizards’ entertainment (Dudley’s pig tail), as well as being hunted across the country, driven out to sea and found anyway. Hagrid showed that, in comparison to the Dursleys, he is practically omniscient and omnipotent. And he chose to manage his relationship with them using power rather than negotiation.

Hagrid is a half-blood, so in wizarding terms he is middle-class (albeit lower). However, he is also half human, therefore he experiences racism. There is racism in Harry Potter, but it lies in how non-humans are treated, not in the death eaters’ attitudes to half-bloods and muggles. This is a good example of how racism interacts with class: Hagrid had access to education and even now has access to magical power and knowledge despite not technically having a wand. He has a job that gives him responsibility and commands some respect, and he has access to good food and healthcare if he wants it via the great hall and Madam Pomfrey. However, his race, i.e. half-giant, predisposed him to be taken advantage of by others: he got expelled because Riddle’s story in CoS was only too believable for a racist society. Compare that with Islamic extremism today – if a white child accused a half-Pakistani child of harming others at school, they would be believed. Luckily, his middle-class status saved him from being cast out, imprisoned even, because it meant that he knew the right people. If Dumbledore hadn’t spoken out for Hagrid, offered him a job, allowed him a comfortable enough existence at Hogwarts and allowed him continued access to the magical world via caring for magical creatures in the forest and looking the other way when he put his wand in umbrella, then Hagrid would have ended up living a very miserable life. Would he have done or got away with all that if Hagrid was muggleborn?

His attitudes also reveal his wizarding middle-class status. He is prejudiced against muggles, I don’t care what people say. When explaining that there are wizards to Harry he tells Harry that wizards are best off in hiding, away from the muggles and he encourages Harry to curse Dudley once he’s trained up. That attitude also highlights a key thing, that there is other evidence for in later books: wizards are scared of muggles. No matter how much power they have, they are a minority. The same is true of the real upper-class. They are scared that muggles will rise up and overthrow them, just as the real upper-class are (or perhaps were) scared the masses will. He also gets annoyed at the higher classes’ privilege in that way the person who wrote the book review I included in my class essay was: he slags off Slytherin, which favours pure-bloods, every chance he gets and tells Harry that there wasn’t a witch or wizard who was bad who wasn’t in Slytherin, which is not true. At that point he believed Sirius to have gone over and betrayed the Potters. Ok, it was Peter Pettigrew, but either way it was a Gryffindor. In saying those negative things to Harry about Slytherin he set up prejudice in Harry’s own mind. He made it sound like no-one good had been in Slytherin, which is also not true. He is angry that he does not have access to their privilege.

In real words terms Hagrid is working-class, though. His housing is small, basic and clearly inferior to the rest of the housing at Hogwarts. He works the land in exchange for being allowed to remain there, so in this respect it harks back to serfs serving the landed gentry under feudalism. At home he eats food which is less appealing and nutritious than is served in the great hall, and some of it he has because he has hunted it himself, e.g. stoat sandwiches. His appearance is “wild and ungroomed”. He has animals and miscellanea in his coat, which conjures up an image of Compo from Last of the summer wine, which was a TV comedy (though I think it was terrible) about some men in a northern town. Compo is a scruffy working-class man who keeps ferrets, which working-class people in the north used to put down their trousers for a laugh and see who could manage it the longest.

He also doesn’t see the same value in education as someone of a higher-class would: he tells Harry, Rin and Hermione they’re a bit keen to be in the library the day before the holidays. It doesn’t mean he is disparaging of education, but it does show that he can’t see why someone would enjoy books and learning new things. Going to the library is Hermione’s idea of a good time, but Hagrid only associates it with work. Both points of view are valid, but it shows how different they are due to class difference. His writing is untidy, which alludes to a low level of education and his language is most certainly encoded as working-class. In the British version, Hagrid’s speech is written as it sounds. His pronunciation and accent are working-class and arguably northern. He often misses the last letter off words: ‘an’ for ‘and’ ‘righ’ for ‘right’; he doesn’t articulate his /ooo/ sound ‘properly’; rather he flattens it: ‘ter’ for ‘to’ and ‘yeh’ for ‘you’. He also flattens and shortens some words and phrases in a way consistent with working-class speech, e.g. ‘me’ for ‘my’ and ‘gotta’ for ‘got to’. Moreover, some of his grammatical structures are colloquial and associated with working-class speech, e.g.  “it’s them as should be sorry” instead of “it’s them who/that should be sorry” or, as an upper-class person would probably say, “it is they who should be sorry”. The only other person in PS to have their speech written as it sounds is the hotel (which is clearly some small, local shithole) owner in Cokeworth, who says “an ‘undred” instead of “a hundred”. This raises the interesting question of how such speech is translated to other languages, and to what extent translation could prevent you accessing the original class connotations. I have the Russian version of PS and it doesn’t contain, as far as I can tell as a non-native speaker of Russian, any markers that could tell you anything about Hagrid other than that he says “eh/er” a lot. And if you are a native speaker of an English other than British English, is Hagrid’s speech written like that? If so, do you read it and understand what it’s telling the reader about him?

Looking at Malfoy next, it is completely clear that Malfoy is upper-class in both worlds from the moment we meet him. In Madam Malkins he refers to his dad as ‘father’, which I’ve already talked about, he talks about bullying his dad to get things he wants, showing he is entitled and wealthy and Harry describes his voice as “drawling”. This adjective means that you drag out your vowels. In Britain, posher language is characterised by long vowels, whereas more colloquial speech has flattened vowels. There is potential here for Americans not to understand this, if in the American version of PS the word “drawling” is still used, because in American accents “drawl” is usually attributed to the south, which has connotations of sounding like a yokel. Here a drawl is very posh speech. This is why Harry dislikes Malfoy instantly, despite barely having exchanged a few sentences with him – he picked up on the huge class difference and it made him uncomfortable. Malfoy also says, “I say!” at one point, which is extremely posh. In fact that exclamation is purposely contrasted with Ron’s working-class translation,“oy!”, at one point. He also says, “would you mind moving out of the way?”, which is also very high-class. Most people would say, “can you move out of the way?” A lot of the speech that shows characters to be upper-class or working/middle-class is to do with subtle registers of English that are extremely hard to explain. Crudely, you could say that the lower someone is in class, the more minimalistic and blunt their speech tends to be. “Would you mind” is both longer than necessary and overly formal (polite) (though, of course, Malfoy meant it sarcastically).

We don’t know where Malfoy lives until later in the series, but we do know he is wealthy and privileged enough to have staff, since he views Hagrid as a servant. This sounds so prejudiced of him, but really he is just as much an outsider to the world of working as Hermione is to the world of magic. When he said, “he’s a sort of servant isn’t he?” he was betraying inherited class prejudice, yes, but he was also just a child trying to make sense of his surroundings using the only frame of reference he had.

In my opinion, something Malfoy says in PS makes it absolutely clear that the pure-blood/half-blood/muggleborn thing is about the British class system: “I really don’t think they should let the other sort in do you? They haven’t been brought up to know our ways (...) they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What’s your surname anyway?” This illustrates perfectly what I said in my essay about the upper-class being a case of which family you belong to. Malfoy believes that wizarding knowledge should be basically kept within the sacred 28, just as the British upper-class believes that access to their world should be basically kept amongst themselves. It’s why European royal families inter-married to the point of disease in the past. His comment “some wizarding families are better than others” means exactly the same thing. Read ‘some British families are better than others’.

Malfoy has the wealth associated with being upper-class and he rubs it in everyone’s face. He can’t empathise with less wealthy people until later in the series, when he realises some things are more important than money. Somehow, an upper-class family who isn’t living as an upper-class family should, like the Weasleys, is more unsavoury than a working-class family living in the same conditions, because the upper-class see their status as a divine birth right. For that reason, Malfoy is especially unpleasant to Ron. There is a large section of PS where Malfoy makes a snide remark about the Weasleys’ poverty every single page. He also calls them “riff-raff”, which is a real world insult. It means rubbish, the dregs of society, people whose only cause to live is to serve.

Then there’s Hogwarts itself and the staff who live there. Hogwarts is completely upper-class. For a start, consider all the stuff you need to buy just to go. I know there’s an access fund, but it’s implied you only get it if you have literally nothing, including parents. Imagine how much it is to buy all the books and equipment and uniform. You need to be wealthy to be able to buy all that and not worry about money. Secondly, the quality of stuff around the castle shows it’s upper-class, e.g. glittering gold plates and goblets and historical artefacts like suits of armour. It sounds like Buckingham Palace. Then there’s the fact that it’s a castle at all. Upper-class families reside normally in historic buildings. I mean could it get any posher than a literal castle? Then there’s the fact that you make a dramatic entrance over a darkened lake like you’re in a film noir. How pretentious is that?

Also, Harry is bowled over by how amazing the food is. As I’ve said before, most kids at school at that time were eating chips and turkey twizzlers every day. Wizards have special, private transport to take them to school, where they board for literally no reason other than class tradition because it would be just as easy to travel by floo powder every day. They are obsessed with sporting competitions. In normal muggle schools hardly anyone cares about sport. People like P.E. as a subject but they don’t all go and watch matches involving school teams and get emotionally involved. I have never once been aware of anyone going to a school sports fixture as a spectator. That alone might be hard for Americans to get their heads around.

The school houses is also a feature of posher schools. Some lower-class schools have them as well, but people don’t care about them in the same way. No-one feels like they are a part of their house, and they certainly don’t absorb their house as part of their identity later in life the way Hogwarts students do. Additionally, the ghosts we meet have upper-class titles: Sir and Baron. Moreover, there is the fact that the teachers call the students by their surnames, even sometimes with titles, e.g. “Mr Potter”. That is completely an upper-class thing. Traditionally, I think you used to get it at normal schools as well, but since well before HP was written, it has been a feature of solely top-end schools. It comes from the formality that marks the upper-class. There’s a moment in one of the books where McGonagall calls Harry ‘Harry’ while having a gentle, friendly conversation with him, and then immediately switches back to ‘Potter’ once she returns to strict, no-nonsense teacher mode, and Harry himself picks up on it. There’s also the use of people’s full first names, which also gives an air of formality, distance and authority. Dumbledore, for instance, refers to Ron as “Mr. Ronald Weasley”, which sounds ridiculous to the average ear. Hermione also habitually switches from ‘Ron’ to ‘Ronald’ when she is chastising him – this demonstrates that she knows how to create the sort of authority and formality required to construct a superior power relation. Then there’s the sheer fact of the pretentious Latin incantations. Many working-class kids would struggle to remember even the most basic of incantations. In fact, the kids coded as real world working-class often do struggle to do well at spells: Ron, Harry, Neville for instance. Hermione, who is real world middle-class, has had the sort of education that predisposes one to be able to remember foreign vocabulary. She probably even did Latin at her previous school whereas Harry certainly won’t have gone anywhere near it at his primary school.

Dumbledore is immediately marked as upper-class (which of course he is because he’s head of the wizards) by the fact that on the Hogwarts letters they list his numerous titles and positions at the top. Just in case you were in any doubt about how much power he has. And then there’s eccentric speech he gives that causes Harry to ask if he’s mad. Of course he’s mad, he’s the head toff. I talked in my class essay about the stereotype that upper-class people are eccentric.

The fact the teachers are called professor shows how upper-class it is too. No-one in state schools, or even private schools to my knowledge, does that. It’s hyper-formal and posh. British schoolchildren call their teachers ‘miss’ or ‘sir’ or their title and name, i.e. Mr Dumbledore. There’s also the fact that Dumbledore is the one who makes all the profound, philosophical statements in the books: he has had the education and mental energy to think about life. One of these statements is that having all the money and life you could ever want is not such a wonderful thing. OK, I get what he’s saying but, still, that’s easy to say when you have a lot. If he was poorer and hadn’t stayed healthy into old age, would he have thought that? Probably not. I already mentioned that Dumbledore says “Mr Ronald Weasley”, but in the same sentence he says, “Misters Fred and George Weasley”, “Miss Hermione Granger” and the word “lavatory”, all of which are very posh. I’ve never met a working-class person who says ‘lavatory’. Everyone knows what it means, but most people would say ‘toilet’, or maybe ‘loo’.

Let’s look at Snape next. In Harry’s first potions lesson Snape chastises the class for not writing down what he was saying. That’s because he knows first-hand how education can open doors and change who you are. We don’t know this yet in PS, but it completely incredible he has got this far in life. He has done so largely due to curiosity, gathering information, making notes of new things, and using it all to work things out and say the right things to the right people. He knows that knowledge and skills honed through practise are power.

He knows Harry has been living with middle-class relatives, that he is the descendant of a rich wizard and is famous. He also knows Petunia, although we don’t know it yet. He does not know that Harry didn’t know he was a wizard, or that Harry has been treated as a third-class citizen. He also doesn’t know what Harry knows about him. It is logical to assume that Petunia might have mentioned him, and if she had she would have done so disparagingly (she does do this actually, but later in the series). While he is giving his rousing, poetic potions speech at the start, Harry is talking when he shouldn’t be. Snape interprets this as arrogance. His whole “fame isn’t everything” moment, where he questions Harry about stuff he couldn’t possibly know is meant to be a lesson in humility. Snape is saying ‘I might be under you in class but I am the one with the power now’. He is also championing hard work - Snape wants the other kids to know that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done so far; as far as he is concerned it’s what you do with the opportunity to learn and how hard you work that matters. It’s unfortunate that he misjudged Harry and knocked his confidence, but it shouldn’t be seen as such a big deal. If I had been in that class I would have felt reassured. When people get worked up about Snape’s behaviour here, it’s because they don’t realise or understand that he and Harry did not start off in life equal. Nor, indeed did many of the kids in that class. Americans misjudge that scene because they are brought up believing that all men are born free and equal in right. Even if that idea doesn’t translate into reality in the US, the sentiment is there. People have it etched into their brains. Here, it is very different. The class system means that everyone knows that people are not born free or equal in right. To Snape, Harry represents a layer of society that wanted to keep him unequal; to stop him doing well for himself. It’s an irony that the death eaters, the purists of the upper-class world, allowed Snape access to their privilege in a way that the Marauders, who champion muggleborns, did not. I will talk about that in a later post.

Snape seems to get on with Filch, which suggests he feels comfortable around him in a way he doesn’t with everyone else. Filch is certainly encoded as working-class – he works hard doing manual jobs and nobody cares. It’s treated as laughable if students make a mess or damage something People make fun of his appearance. He’s a squib. I always feel ill at ease reading bits with Filch in them. I feel like he is mocked for his lack of privilege and treated like a slave. Snape seems to be more at ease with him than he is with others, so that, to me, suggests they have similar background. Snape’s grouchy attitude stems in part from knowing he is out of place in terms of class. He is defensive and stressed as a result.

The way Snape talks also carries class coding. Working-class people tend to be quite abrupt and direct in their speech, especially in the north, which some people take for a bad temper or bad manners. In fact I would say from experience that the further north you go, the more blunt and brutally honest the speech, and the more likely people are to mock you. Usually this mocking is down to showing a lack of formality in order to construct openness and familiarity, but it is frequently misunderstood. They call a spade a spade and don’t bother with the subtleties that make cushion their opinions and ideas. It is the reason Scottish comedians tend to be more caustic than English ones. To me, nearly all of Snape’s grouchy-sounding comments stem from this tendency. He is speaking to the kids the way people spoke to him when he was a kid. His manner stands out massively in the minds of most of the Hogwarts pupils because it is so out of place, not because he is rude and the other teachers aren’t, but because he has working-class roots and the others don’t. He has since moved up the ladder, so he affects speech that is more befitting to his position as a Hogwarts teacher, as well, for example he appears to have standard pronunciation. He also consciously uses more sophisticated vocabulary than is natural to him. We see this in his opening speech in Harry’s first potions lesson. He gives the poetic speech about what you can learn in potions, pauses, then slips back into his natural speech: “if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach”. The insult, the contraction ‘aren’t’, the quantifier ‘bunch’ are all markers of lower-class speech. He probably couldn’t help doing it – the sophisticated, well-spoken professor act is indeed an act. (In fact, the extremity of the ‘working-class playing upper-class’ act is the reason he is so good at occlumency and spying – he has had so much practise pretending to be something he’s not and blocking out undesirable traits that it comes naturally.) He also, unconsciously, was trying to construct an air of relaxed ease in the classroom: when people talk like that, it makes him feel at ease. I know Harry was also raised working-class, but it was a middle-class household, so his experience of speech isn’t exactly the same, and also, crucially, Harry is from Surrey – a lot further south than Snape is from. As I said, that abrupt, sarcastic, bluntness increases the further north you go.

The image of Snape spitting on the ground at the end of the quidditch match, to me, makes him appear uncouth and socially inappropriate, which plays (negatively) on his working-class background.

When Harry and Hermione go after the stone, Snape’s puzzle is not based in magical knowledge. It’s a logic puzzle accessible by everyone. This is a big deal, in my opinion. A muggle could get through that puzzle. That shows, firstly, that he doesn’t value inherent privilege and membership of the upper-class, but genuine intelligence, curiosity and enquiry, spanning all classes (and races – a house-elf could have done it). Secondly, that he is still thinking like a muggle. He is a great wizard, he used to be a death eater and he is a teacher at the poshest school in Britain; you would think he would have started to embody upper-class, but instead he is still soaked with muggle, or working-class attributes. He has moved up the social ladder, but it can’t be done cleanly, with clearly defined lines. That one act of setting a non-magical puzzle says everything. Hermione is thrilled with it because, probably for the first time all year, she doesn’t feel like an outsider. The puzzle is just as accessible to her as it is to anybody. That is great teaching, even if it’s questionable obstacle-setting!

We don’t find out much about Quirrell but we know he is upper or upper middle-class because he travelled around the world. Going on a gap year and travelling the world tends to be something only wealthy and culturally experienced people want to do and can afford to do. In Deathly Hallows, it is mentioned that Dumbledore and Doge were planning to do this and JKR called it ‘the grand tour’. This is a real historical, upper-class concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour.

A few words on Diagon Alley now. The goblins are interesting. It’s been said goblins are a jewish stereotype, which is definitely true (though not intentional by JKR I am sure) and they face racism. It’s also true, however, that in the real world we don’t like bankers, and that’s linked to class too. It feels like bankers are upper-middle class arseholes trying to get as close as possible to the top echelons of power by making the working-class ever poorer. I think that’s part of the reason Gringotts is so splendid and ornate on the surface, yet dark, dangerous, unpleasant and even mysterious on the inside – because it reflects real bankers, or at least the image we have of them: rich and polished to look at but nasty on the inside. Also regarding Diagon Alley, Harry takes a faint dislike he can’t put his finger on to Ollivander. It’s because Ollivander remembers the ancestry of his wands. It’s a reference to the upper-class using blood (which is the same thing as ancestry and surname) to define their social status but Harry is too young to understand what it is that bothers him. The moment Hagrid and Harry arrive back in the muggle world after shopping they are eating burgers on plastic seats. This image of cheap food and furniture marks their transition from upper-class (the wizarding way) to working-class (the muggle way).

We see another example of how wizarding blood is a metaphor for class in Neville’s experiences. Neville is a pure-blood and his family is on the sacred 28. He has magical privilege just like Ron. His parents famously served in the closest thing the wizarding world has to a military, which echoes the tradition of real upper-class men serving in the British armed forces. Yet, by contrast, he has little power. He isn’t encoded as working-class in the same way Ron is, but we know that his status is questionable because he isn’t very good at magic. His blood is pure, but is it healthy? His family were so appalled by the idea that he might not have ‘healthy’ wizarding blood that they abused him and put his life at risk to force the truth about his blood out. He isn’t a squib, but he isn’t good at wand magic. His skills lie in herbology, which lacks the power associated with wands and also alludes to working the land. He is descended from pure-bloods so he was unquestionably born into the upper-class. The question is, does he have the qualities the upper-class use to maintain power over the lower classes? For, whilst membership of the upper-class is defined by blood (in both the real and wizarding world), that status is simply ceremonial if you do not have the power relations that go with it. Since Neville does not have what it takes to have such power relations, he is an embarrassment and loses a considerable amount of his privilege. Squibs suffer a similar fate. To me, a squib is a member of the upper-class who dramatically don’t fit in, or are unable to exude some of the qualities critical for power relations.

(This is going to sound weird, but I have often felt that Neville is loosely based on Prince Harry. In case you don’t know, people have always speculated that Prince Charles might not really have been Harry’s father because he looks so different from him and so similar to another man Diana knew, James Hewitt. He doesn’t really behave like royals traditionally do and has always been kind of normal seeming. He goes drinking with mates, goes to parties and generally interacts with anyone. He doesn’t care as much about putting on a persona for the public, sometimes doing stupid things in front of the press and he also did badly at school. He grew up while the HP books were being written, and of course by the time JKR was writing CoS his mother had died. All that has always felt to me quite comparable with Neville not really fitting in where he was supposed to and not having his parents at home and not doing well at school, but then turning out to be one of the most decent of the lot of them.)

If, as I believe, the blood status of wizards is a metaphor for the class status – pure/upper, half/middle and muggle/working – then several interesting questions are raised. Firstly, to what extent are characters aware if their classes, both wizarding and real, and how does that effect their lives. Secondly, was the metaphor intentional? What was JKR trying to say? Or what does it say about her, and by extension about the average British person. Thirdly, why do so many characters have a real world class which contrasts, rather than parallels, their wizarding world class? And what of those who do have parallel classes? Finally, and most importantly, since class relations are power relations, what significance is there of Voldemort’s proclamation that, “there is no good and evil, only power”? These are questions that I will attempt to answer over later posts, one for each book, though it will be quite a while before I have time to write more.

[izzyovercoffee]

Seeing your discussions on pronouncing Mando'a recently got me wondering: how actually does one pronounce Mereel? Since English is my only language, I just defaulted to mer-EEL. But since there's two vowels, maybe it should be mer-EY-el (elided), or mer-EH'el (glottal stop) or the stress on the last syllable (mer-ey-EL or mer-eh'EL), or even the stress on the first syllable? I have no idea now and I don't know enough about Mando'a to make an educated guess. What is your opinion?

My FAVORITE thing about this question is that it’s something that comes up like every couple months or so. This specific “How do I pronounce Mereel?” question. I’m also like … simultaneously the best and worst person to ask, because my answer is literally “all ways to pronounce Mereel is the correct way,” and I maintain that Mereel would very likely feel the same way, given how he likes to flex words in any way he can.

I feel like one can really express just how they’re feeling @ Mereel simply by how they pronounce his name.

And like … even though I’ve been writing things to do with Mereel directly for quite a long time now, I still don’t pronounce his name in the exact same way every time bc … lmao, of course I don’t.

Personally, on any given day, I’d pronounce his name as either meh’REEL or meh’REY’ehl, or if shortened, then REY’ehl, as opposed to REEL. Pronunciation is entirely contingent on one’s accent and one’s dialect — of which I’ve insisted that mando’a must have multiple dialects, specifically due to the widespread reach of mandalorians during the Mandalorian Wars.

On a more serious note though …

Determining how Mereel’s name is pronounced “correctly” would actually require learning from where his name actually comes from, and its origins. If it’s a loan word from a different language, that generally affects how pronunciation “should” or “could” be. 

Mereel’s name actually comes from a mandalorian clan: clan Mereel, of which Mand’alor Jaster Mereel was apart. The thing is, he’s native to Concord Dawn, located firmly within Mandalorian space, and served as a Journeyman Protector (the group that Fenn Rau belongs to) … but for whatever reason, he was not considered mandalorian until he was formally adopted by a True Mandalorian (faction). 

The tricky thing here is that, at least in Legends, Concord Dawn has its own particular accent and dialect different from “standard” mando’a and main mandalorian space where Sundari is located. Jaster Mereel did not change his name when he was adopted, and so Mereel is technically a Concordian family name. 

Where am I going with this?

Well, Concord Dawn was a predominantly agriculture world — the vast majority of the population who called the planet home were farmers, or part of an agriculture-focused industry of some kind. 

The word that sounds and looks closest to Mereel would be … Neral, which translates to grain. And, it would make sense for a family name of a family native to an agricultural world, to be close to, or similar to, grain.

I feel like this is the closest, most genuine origin of the name. And, if this really is the case, then the “correct” way to pronounce Mereel would be closer to 

mer - EYL / meh - REYL

I mean … aside from neral, there aren’t any close/similar words in mando’a that I can see. Then again, like many other family names, some changes can happen over time — and this isn’t quite taking into account dialectical differences between mando’a spoken by a Sundari mandalorian vs a Concordian.

On top of that, I could be completely off and it’s entirely possible that it’s not a name of Concordian origin but a combination of other words, something perhaps from:

mircin — cage

mhi — us/we

mhor — [rare, archaic] ours

used with some variation of IIL or AAL, or EL, though aal is more likely, as its word would already exist: aalar, to feel … but possibly also from elek, meaning yes

mir’aal — claustrophobic

mhor’el — agreement, accord

I like the idea that Mereel comes from neral, though, and it makes the most sense purely from history, and location, and people.

[eurolinguiste]

The following post is a guest post from fellow language learner and musician Fiel Sahir. He came to me with this excellent idea on how to apply music study techniques to language learning and I just love what he came up with. 

So take it away, Fiel!

This is it.

Lots of crazy things going on in the world, so it’s time to bring in some positive energy. Let’s make 2017 something worth looking back on.

Losing weight is good, hiking up Everest is always prospect, as is finally getting to those cooking classes. There are always more ideas floating around than we realistically have time for. It’s hard to know what to choose.

Already, it’s February. There’s a pretty good chance that so far, you’re not quite where you want to be with your goals for the new year. Kinda frustrating, isn’t it?

Maybe trying to tackle Mandarin from scratch was too difficult, and now it’s crunch time at work. All those characters! UGH! If only the boss was more lenient so that you’d have a bit more free time. Or maybe you were still just wishing you had a better plan or strategy.

As humans we often tend to think too big. We love to dream about end results as if they were as easy as picking an apple off a tree. It’s easy to forget that there’s work that needs to go on behind the scenes to make those end results a reality.

I’m not saying goals and resolutions are bad. Not at all. It’s a sign that you are a responsible individual and that you want to take charge of your life! The world needs people like you.

The problem is that these goals are often too big.

As the days roll by, life happens. You’ve find your progress up that mountain has halted and you’re frustrated about why you aren’t at the peak yet. You start to wonder if you’ll ever arrive.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to learn languages?

What makes ordinary people do great things is not because they themselves were great. Rather, it’s all about how normal people tackle great adversity.

If you’re short on time, and want to get to the specifics there’s a detailed video explaining how things work in this post.

What in the world is chunking?

I’ll let you in on a secret: Just doing something repetitively won’t solve your problems.

Instead, you need to be more mindful of how you spend your study time and develop a series of tactics that work for you. Chunking is a technique that musicians use and I’ve also found it useful in language learning and it may be the right choice for you.

For those of you unfamiliar with chunking, it is the practice of breaking things down into bitesize pieces. Whether you like it or not, your brain can only process a limited amount of information. You cannot absorb everything at once. But if you give it breathing room, the brain can absorb more effectively.

Let’s say you want to go to the US for college. It’s tempting to throw up your hands in desperation exclaiming, “OH MY GOD. I HAVE TO LEARN ENGLISH!!” While that may be your current mountain, take a breath. Do what Benny Lewis the Irish Polyglot does instead:

“Today I need to learn how to introduce myself. Tomorrow I’d like to order a coffee. Hmm… maybe I’d like to talk with a waitress at a café today.”

See how much less pressure that carries? You can even go further still!

You might find something similar to the following dialogue in your course book: Jack: Hey! My name’s Jack. Where are you from? Ann: Oh, hi! I’m Ann. Nice to meet you! I’m from Seattle. Jack: Nice… I’m from Nebraska. It’s a pretty cold place. I hear Seattle gets TONS of rain!

Let’s say this is your first ever English dialogue. What the heck is Nebraska? After looking it up, you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s just a place name.

You naturally read it over and over again from beginning to end and soon find the rhythm in your voice. After having done that multiple times, you realize it’s not sinking in as well as you hoped. You look at it and shake your head thinking, “How can I learn this in the most efficient way possible?”

Spending a lot of time on something doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get anything done…. Click To Tweet

Simple Repetition isn’t the Answer

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Unknown but falsely attributed to Einstein

I recently sat down with a polyglot friend over Skype who wanted some guitar advice before he recorded a video for YouTube.

One of his enduring questions was, “Do you ever get stuck in a song and then have to play from the beginning all over again? I never seem able to just pick up where I messed up!“

I then asked him how he was practicing, and therein lay the answer.

For anyone who’s studied music (particularly classical), this is a problematic reality. Many people look at sheet music and “practice” by playing from beginning to end.

While a Freshman at the New England Conservatory, that was my routine. I thought, as long as I spent two hours on this piece everyday, it would get better. Two hours of putting something on repeat and stopping to fix mistakes only once as you plow through doesn’t do much. Why? Because you’ll only make them again. You’re not giving your brain enough time to process and reprogram what you’ve learned.

Just as you can learn to play the right notes, you can also program yourself to play mistakes. And…

Mistakes don’t fix themselves. If they do, it’s never at the speed you need or want. This problem plagues everyone from the amateur to the seasoned professional. Music is enjoyable and it’s easy to get lost in it.

“Playing is simply intoxicating!” – Adam Holzman, Classical Guitarist and Pedagogue

One of the problems many musicians face is relying too much on muscle memory. On the other hand, language learners focus too much on the script in front of them. After spending a good amount of time with the music or text you begin to feel pretty great.

The reason is, no one is there to judge but ourselves.

Then comes the moment when you have to practice in front of our language partner or tutor. Half a sentence leaves our lips, and then our nerves kick in and you forget the rest. This happens multiple times within one session. It’s pretty embarrassing!

Everyone has problems and challenges. Nothing new. How you address them, especially through chunking will change everything.

Building better “practice” habits.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” – Doug Yeo former BSO Bass Trombonist

Being a Classical Guitarist by trade, these are techniques I’ve learned over the years that push me in the right direction. I’m in the business of having to learn music for concerts and competitions. Without these ideas, I’d end up just playing my pieces over and over again.

What I’m about to describe is invaluable information. It’s the behind-the-scenes work of professional musicians and actors. It’s how they perfect their craft. I’m sure Shannon can attest to having used these techniques herself.

1. Take it slow, phrase by phrase.

Ignore the temptation is to take it in all at once. Don’t forget the brain can only process a certain amount of information.

As you look at a dialogue, feel the words in your mouth, and the weird shapes and sounds of this new language. Give your body time to adjust. It’s like stretching into a new yoga pose.

Maybe your accent is really bothering you and you’re not sure how to fix it. There is hope!

I highly recommend Idahosa Ness’ MimicMethod or Gabriel Wyner’s Pronunciation-Trainers. What makes them work is the musical philosophy behind their methods.

“If you can’t hear it you can’t imitate (pronounce) it.”

2. Prioritize.

Scratch out words you do know and circle ones you don’t.

Take charge by deciding what is priority and work with that. Knowing how to say “Nice to meet you” is much more important than knowing what Nebraska is.

Sorry Nebraskans…

3. Drill it again and again.

Although it may sound like it, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do repetitions.

What makes musicians learn music quickly is by changing how you repeat! Artists make it fun and useful. Keeping it varied also helps avoid burn-out.

Try the following options:

Read a phrase syllable by syllable.

Again, but this time In different rhythms or speeds.

Use what opera singers and actors call “back-chaining.” Back-chaining is the practice of going backwards and building up a word one syllable at a time. (More on this in the video.)

4. Record yourself at normal speed to listen to and identify problems.

After practicing something for awhile it’s easy to feel proud of yourself. Sometimes you might even feel as though you can take on the world.

The fix for that is recording yourself. Why?

Once you hit the record button, something clicks. You’ll be making mistakes you’ve never made before and it’ll show you what to improve. Being under stress no matter how small, produces changes in performance.

Speaking of which, Lindsay Does Languages is doing what’s called the Instagram Language Challenge (#IGLC). I can tell you from personal experience that it’s nerve wracking. So why do I still do it? Because afterwards, I can evaluate my mistakes and fix them! The other participants are also quite helpful in correcting any mistakes. And best of all, it’s FREE.

5. Practice again with these new ideas

Review the various points as well as the video. As you wrestle with the ideas I’ve shared with you, adjust them to how you learn best. Our goal is to turn you into a highly effective independent learner.

6. Go public!

Assuming you haven’t already done this step, going public sets you up for accountability. When people are watching what you’re doing, you’re less likely to slack off.

One last idea. Never be afraid to keep asking for a second opinion. When you let others check your progress, you’ll find that their insight is priceless.

Now, enough theory. Go practice!

There’s a lot of information here in this post, so feel free to come back to it whenever you’re feeling stuck.

For now, get out there and apply what you’ve learnt today. Whether it be language learning, cooking, music practice, it’s time to do things better.

Here’s to a productive 2017!

Want more tips on language learning from a musical perspective? Be sure to check out Fiel’s presentation at the Polyglot Gathering in 2016.

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