#491 words

[asheescribbles]

Cursed!Gabe 1

Mazin stared at the stars above him. He couldn’t really make out many of them, with all the lights of the campus, but it was a calming thing. Remind yourself you are just a tiny spec in the universe. Find focus… balance…

Ding.

… or a message. That’s fine, too.

He fished the phone out and wondered whom he possibly didn’t blacklist and still called him at such an early hour. It was barely nine.

And the Answer was…

RetiredDragon: ‘Hey Mazin, can I ask a favour? Could you come over?’

Oh? Gabe needed a favour?

He wasn’t usually the type to need favours…

After two more seconds of consideration, he shrugged, typed ‘k, cu in 5’ and climbed down his stargazing tree.

Still waters are deep and murky. Maybe he needed to access a Tor-auction of something.

It might be fun. He could be riled up. If the mood was right.

Mazin sauntered over to the history-major’s student home, was glad to find they still hadn’t revoked his rights to access and knocked at the right door in the third floor.

He waited, plucking some of the leaves off his jacket: “Come on, prime angel boy, I’m easily bored!” Just to annoy him, of course, since the door already opened and he could continue: “Heeey there, what’s the proble-“

Huh.

Mazin blinked twice at the figure in front of him.

It was a nice figure, certainly. Most definitely a nice figure.

It had the right hair colour. And the right height – only a head smaller than him. And the right skin and eye colour. Perfectly familiar annoyed-with-Mazin expression as well.

But that F-sized chest was… definitely not planned. Especially as braless as this one.

The pants didn’t sit right. Neither did the shirt, really.

Those were some nice hips, really. Terribly well hidden, but damn.

Just reaching out and grab and pull and-

Mazin shook his head. That was weird. He had to concentrate.

And cause a distraction. For himself. So he called into the flat behind the lady: “HEY GABE, DID YOU LAY YOUR TWIN SISTER?”

Which did NOT go over well with the lady in front of him, who grabbed his collar, pulled him in, shoved him towards the wall on the other side and looked outside if anyone might have heard that.

There was no one, Mazin knew that. But really. The lady was more attractive than he had ever experienced, except… when something strange was afoot.

He needed to concentrate. Still. And NOT on the not-entirely-closed shirt she was wearing. Better on the very-put-upon expression she was wearing, now after she had slammed the door and stared at him.

“Hey there. Gabe called me. I heard there’s a problem”

Maybe his grin was a little too wide. But it was a strange situation.

“Name’s Mazin, by the way…”

He tried a LITTLE bit of respect.

“… or boy toy, whichever you’d rather use”

… or not.

[twowug]

Family History Book: H.P. Schrock

[This will be the last letter I look at. Otherwise, my family history book would end up taking up half of my language journal entries.]

This letter, dated significantly later than Peter and Henry's, is completely written in English. Note the change in the last name's spelling from 'Schrack' to 'Schrock,' perhaps done deliberately as an attempt to have more of an Englishy spelling.

This English is very...well, German. I assume H.P. Schrock learned German as a first language and English as a second language. I also assume he was not formally educated based on the fact that he was a (probably poor) Amish farmer.

Schrock neglects punctuation and spacing in some places, and he writes several sentences that lack subject-verb agreement (such as 'How is your Colts doing...' and 'Sleds runs hard'). These writing quirks could be an indication of several things: his education level, different or fewer standards during the time period, or his dialect.

German Influence?

Right away, one notices Schrock's weird capitalization habits. Especially interesting is the fact that he capitalizes many definite and indefinite articles; this is not characteristic of German standards. I should look into this further to find out where this may originate.

He really exposes how German he is when he writes 'hast' instead of 'have.' Curiously, going by the standard, this is the wrong German conjugation of the word.

Spelling

The most interesting thing about this letter is the way Schrock spells words. It looks like his spelling has no rhyme or reason until you consider the influence of German.

Almost constantly, Schrock uses a 'd' in place of a 't' (mostly at the ends of words). He does this with 'god'/'got,' 'twedy'/'twenty,' 'wasend'/'wasn't,' and the list goes on. This is because in German, a letter 'd' that comes at the end of words is almost always pronounced with the 't' sound.

He sometimes uses the letter 's' instead of 'z' ('blissard'/'blizzard,' 'frosen'/'frozen'). Once again, this is thanks to the influence of German pronunciation, where the letter 's' is sometimes pronounced with more of a 'z' sound.

For many words that have double consonants, he spells them with one ('I'll' as 'Il,' 'stuff' as 'stuf,' 'express' as 'Expres,' 'guess' as 'ges'...). These spelling errors may come about because German typically only has double consonants in certain arrangements of vowels and consonants.

Schrock leaves out a silent 'e' in 'come.' The German language doesn't have silent letters. If the word 'come' was German, it would be pronounced 'komə.'

Also, his spelling of 'wedding' makes me smile.

P.A. Dutch?

I do not see any hints of P.A. Dutch in this letter, but this is probably because I am not very familiar with the language and therefore am more likely to overlook things. There may be some overlap with the German and P.A. Dutch influence.

Unfortunately, the family history book only has a single letter written by Schrock, and since it is in English, what I can discern from it about his use of P.A. Dutch and German is limited.