[HPforGrownups] Blaise, Boy or Girl? (was Hermione's Friends)

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 26777

In a message dated 9/27/01 11:45:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
rowena_grunnion_ffitch at yahoo.com writes:


>     When does Blaise appear other than at the sorting?
> I can't remember. I opted for male because 'Blaise'
> was the name of a great wizard, the teacher of Merlin,
> (interestingly according to some versions he was also
> a giant). Personally I feel sorry for any little girl
> 

On the HP_Fanfiction Mailing List, Yael, who is one of this list's Israeli 
members, provided an explanation at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP_FanFiction/message/3823
For those of you who aren't members of that list, I'm going to cut & paste 
part of her reply here, because I don't think she'd mind...
Yael wrote: 
In the Hebrew, every noun has a gender, and every verb that acts on that noun 
had to be in the right form for the gender (basically, there are up to a few 
dozen forms for each verb).When they translated:'Zabini, Blaise,' was made a 
Slytherin.What literally came out was: 'Zabini, Blaise,' 
was-a-female-who-became (one word) to-Slytherin.    
    
On that list, CJK has the Russian version, and reported that in the Russian 
translation of PS/SS Blaise is also a girl. The translation of the Russian 
version, according to CJK, says that "...as the female-last-one in the roll, 
Blaise Zabini,was already female-going to the Slytherin table." 
    



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