The teaser is online! (Spoilers)

Carol justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 31 21:09:39 UTC 2008


Carol earlier:
> > Thanks. That's close to what I heard. The analysis site I linked
to in an earlier post has, "In all the years Tom's been here, he's 
never once had a visitor"
 
> zanooda:
> 
> I bet the transcriber understands it better than I do :-)! I
listened to this bit maybe ten times, and I still can't get it right
:-)! The important thing is, there is nothing important or informative
there :-) ! Although I find this remark a bit odd - all the kids in
the orphanage are orphans, aren't they? Who is supposed to visit them?
They are all alone in the world ... ;-(.
>
Carol:
Maybe some of the others have grandparents or other relatives who
sometimes visit them. And it's possible that, say, a widowed mother
had to put her child in an orphanage temporarily because she couldn't
afford to care for them--it's the orphanage, after all.

Also, Tom isn't technically an orphan. His mother died when he was
born, but his father abandoned them. He's still alive, not yet
murdered by his own son, a la Barty Crouch Sr., and for all Mrs. Cole
knows, his grandfather is alive, too. Mrs. Cole in the book says, "But
no Tom nor Marvolo nor any kind of Riddle ever came to visit him."

It's true that the remark isn't really informative or important
(except to the film!only audience, who know next nothing about Tom
Riddle except as a memory in a diary that they don't yet know is a
Horcrux and would only be confused or bored by the detailed account of
his birth and naming), but I still like to understand the dialogue.
I'll sometimes turn on the subtitles in LOTR if I don't understand
what the characters are saying. (BTW, the subtitles aren't always
accurate. There's one place where Bilbo actually says "wander the
paths of Mirkwood again" and it's transcribed as something like
"wonder at the power of Mirkwood again." Aargh.) I do the same thing
for "Pride and Prejudice" or any other film in which the accents are
unfamiliar or the characters speak too rapidly.

Anyway, maybe if I listen to Mrs. Cole often enough, my ears will
become attuned to her accent.

Carol, thanking everybody for their help with this little question





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