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gjm comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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Nitpicking on chapter 74: (1) No one in the UK would be likely to use the word "gotten". (2) Surely Tracey should say "mundata sum" rather than "mundatus" since she's female? (Yeah, it's a quotation. But the person being quoted was male, no?)
This fic is written in American English, Eliezer isn't even remotely trying to be British (look t.e. at all the -ize verbs).
I do think it was a wiser choice than attempting to fake Old World speech, but now that HPMOR has become extremely popular I REALLY wish he would enlist some native fans to Britpick the chapters. I'm not even British and I still found it quite jarring when Quirrell retorted "Fire me" instead of "Sack me".
(I understand that nowadays there is a lot of cross-Atlantic mingling between the two dialects, especially eastwards, but firstly, Harry Potter is set in 1991; and secondly, a medievalesque public school is such a stereotypically British environment that one expects the language to match.)
During the Revolution, Salem witches were considerably more adept at battle magic than those taught at the institution that had been sucking magical knowledge out of the world for the previous 600 years. They also had the advantage of being able to train in the open since most Puritans were self-obliviating.
It wasn't until the 1890's that the school returned fully to Ministry control after the retirement of Headmaster Teetonka. Over a century of American control left its mark on the language and culture of Wizarding Britain, unfortunately the basis of powerful aboriginal magics remains restricted by edict to the students of the Salem Institute, El Dorado, or the University of Phoenix®.
There's nothing wrong with -ize verbs in British English; that's the preferred form of the OED, for instance. But yes, MoR could do with a bit of Britpicking.
(I didn't find "Fire me" jarring; it certainly would have been weird in BrE in 1991, but it isn't in present-day BrE -- not for me, anyway -- and that's what governs my wrongness-sensors.)
That assumes Harry has actual familiarity with Latin rather than just grabbing a bunch of references.
I think it's been mentioned before that he sees personally learning Latin as the obvious way to find out what Bacon's diary says.
Yes, it does. (Though ... this looks to me like an Eliezer-reference rather than a Harry-reference; the thing being referenced is a year or two too late for Harry to know it.) I'd expect MoR!Harry to get something like this right -- but then I'd have expected realworld!Eliezer to get it right too, so maybe I'm unrealistic.