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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong
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In reference to:
If you wondered why the book explicitly calls out that Harry knows the word Horcrux in Parseltongue, here's some background.
Harry has not learned the English word for Horcrux. He knows that unnamed Horcrux-like things exist, and he has heard the word "Horcrux" and made a mental note to look it up, but he hasn't connected the concept to the English name.
How can you write about Horcruxes in third person limited if Harry does not know the word? If you just use the raw word Horcrux without explanation, persnickety readers will concoct elaborate theories about Harry researching Horcruxes off-camera. Calling out that Harry knows the word Horcrux in parseltongue -- and by implication not in English -- may keep persnickety readers at bay.
That doesn't make any sense. If Harry didn't think he knew the word in English, he wouldn't start 'It is called...' and then break off as the Parseltongue word comes to mind and he doesn't have to lapse back into English. He would say something like 'I'm not sure what exactly the ritual is called -'
Yes, elaborate theories based on Harry doing what he said he would do in chapter 86:
Hardly a stretch that he encountered a few hints in books and went 'oh, the dark ritual which confers immortality and something bad Moody thinks Voldemort made while he was alive are the same thing', even if he'd never read about Koschei the Deathless or D&D's liches.
One interpretation is that his language production module generated the sentence "It is called Horcrux", and his conscious mind, in the midst of him saying this sentence, became aware of the fact that he knows the Parseltongue word.
There are few ways the word Horcrux could come out of Harry's mouth that I would not take as evidence for Harry doing outside research. It would take non-trivial circumlocutions to indicate that Harry doesn't know what the English word Horcrux means. Such circumlocutions appear in the text. The best reason I can think of for those circumlocutions to appear in the text is to prevent people like me from inferring too much from Harry's vocabulary choice. There are alternatives explanations, like hinting that Salazar invented Horcruxes, but they seem less likely to me.
And what circumlocutions are those, exactly? Because in the passage quoted, I see a straightforward explanation of the ritual and a naming in English (with the unexpected result that he knew the English word's equivalent in Parseltongue too).
I hope you are right.