ntijanic comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 17 March 2012 09:41AM

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Comment author: ntijanic 20 March 2012 10:04:14AM *  2 points [-]

Hypothesis: original (probably Latin) incantations were aliased to "Wingardium Leviosa" and similar because it was easier for Hogwarts students to learn.

Evidence:

  • Powerful wizards still use some Latin spells. Perhaps only up to 7h year magic was aliased?
  • We did not see any non-English wizards cast spells yet. It's likely (and fits into the setting) there are other syntaxes.
  • Due to the Interdict of Merlin, it's possible the Latin alternatives are lost.

The aliasing could be common knowledge among wizards, but not muggleborns. That could explain Hermione not saying anything when Harry snaps at the silliness of it. Still, Draco doesn't mention it when discussing if early wizards were more powerful.

Do readers get to see non-English speakers cast spells in canon?

Comment author: rdb 20 March 2012 01:28:09PM 4 points [-]

Last night Damian Conway talked about Lingua-Romana-Perligata as part of his "Fun with Dead Languages" talk. He makes the point that Latin's suffixes don't constrain the word order. Given Harry's dream of destroying Azkaban and Dumbledore in Ch 79 muttering strange incantations that sounded not quite like Latin and echoed in their ears in an unusually creepy fashion, maybe Latin provides a larger space to search for a mnemonic phrase that the Source of Magic will match and action, than languages with a more constrained grammar.

Comment author: pedanterrific 20 March 2012 05:03:19PM 7 points [-]

There's also

"Um..." Harry said. "If there are any spells you can cast to make sure no one's listening to us..."

Professor McGonagall stood up from her chair, firmly closed the outer door, and began taking out her wand and saying spells. [...]

Professor McGonagall finished a spell that sounded a lot older than Latin, and then she sat down again.

Not to mention the Sumerian Simple Strike Hex. Mahasu doesn't sound much like Latin.

Comment author: loserthree 23 March 2012 03:01:31AM 4 points [-]

I believe it's meant to be Sumerian

Comment author: faul_sname 23 March 2012 02:41:34AM 0 points [-]

Do we know if the consonants matter, or is just the ratio of vowel sounds?

Comment author: Sheaman3773 23 June 2012 08:55:00PM 0 points [-]

Presumably that was one of the ideas that Harry checked with Hermione in the beginning of the fic.

Comment author: faul_sname 24 June 2012 12:29:15AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I'm sure they know. Do we know?

Comment author: Sheaman3773 31 July 2012 06:43:28PM 0 points [-]

Oh, I see. Not that I recall and not that a(n admittedly cursory) search of the book turned up.

Comment author: Desrtopa 24 June 2012 02:10:28AM 0 points [-]

Given Harry's experiments with his Bag of Holding at the beginning of the story, it seems that magic recognizes the meanings of words irrespective of whether the speakers actually know what they mean, and it doesn't have to be any particular language. I suspect that the spells mostly sounded meaningful to people of various languages throughout history the way "wingardium leviosa" sounds like a levitatey sort of spell to an English speaker.

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