Focaccia and Harry Potter

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 814

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Scott " <harry_potter00 at y...> 
wrote:

> Does that mean that the Italian students would be expected to learn 
> French? If that was the case then the school would also have pupils 
> from Spain, and Portugal, and probably  parts of Switzerland. 

On learning languages: I suppose that the wizard folk don't have 
automagic simultaneous interpreters, or Fudge would have used one 
when speaking to the Bulgarian Minister of Magic. However, I suppose 
that they do have potions or charms to make it very much easier and 
faster to learn a new language -- how many languages did Percy said 
that Mr. Crouch spoke, eighty? Maybe as easy as a potion you drink 
and suddenly you speak and understand the specified language -- in 
tales it is usually the language of birds or the language of 
beasts...

Someone, I think it was Ebony, previously suggested that the Iberian 
students go to school at Beauxbatons because the Spanish school was 
destroyed by a joint effort of the Spanish Inquisition and an evil 
wizard. (See, we perceive the JKR universe as being so rich that 
it has much more history and culture than JKR has time to tell us 
about.) If Beauxbatons is located in Andorra, as a few people believe 
after having read some novel about romantic, magical Andorra, it is 
probably geographically closer to the Spanish students than to the 
French ones.   

> That's well and good but I don't buy it. There HAS to be more 
> schools than just the three. (snip) Of course I can't see the Irish
> going to Hogwarts either....

Well, JKR never told us that there isn't an Italian school and an 
Iberian school and a Greek school and a Russian school .... she just 
told us that Hogwarts is THE school for UK and Ireland, and I can't 
see that any more than you can. Even if Hogwarts was big enough and 
had enough students with Irish names, if that fine Irish National 
Team had gone to Hogwarts, someone would have mentioned them.