Latin and the Female Founders

[edblanning]

No: HPFGUIDX 40259

Rosie:
>   Tessy wrote:
> 
>   "I have spent the last few days thinking about the four
>   founders, particularly about the two women Rowena and
>   Helga. My first question is: Is there anything
>   stated, when Hogwarts was founded? I assumed that it was
>   somewhere around 100 AD or something. But going by
>   this date, I wonder how it was possible for Helga and
>   Rowena to learn Latin, since this is the language
>   needed for the various spells. I assume that the
>   magical community was mixed with the non-magicals in
>   that time, since magic was associated with the gods
>   in pre-Christanity ages. Women had a high status in the
>   celtic culture and most of the religious figures were
>   females. But assuming this would lead to the fact
>   that the celts detested the christians (save for the
>   friars because there the two religions mixed) and would not
>   want to learn their languages. So how did Helga and
>   Rowena learn Latin?"
>  
>  I *think* I'm correct in saying that by the time Hogwarts would 
have been founded (assuming c.100AD) Britain had already been invaded 
by the Romans, some time earlier; although Greek was used for really 
important things, Latin was the language learnt and taught. Only the 
plebs didn't know any; anyone with an education would know Latin in 
Britain. In any case, as Pip says, I think Hogwarts was founded about 
1000 years later than that.


Yes, you're correct on the latter. Both the Sorting Hat and Prof 
Binns say that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago.

Just for the record, Britain, well, southern Britain, became part of 
the Roman Empire in AD 43. How many people were educated enough to 
know Latin is a moot point. A date in the tenth century, or perhaps 
rather earlier puts the founding of Hogwarts firmly into the Anglo-
Saxon era. Or Pictish in Scotland.

At this time, yes, the educated would know Latin (at least, after the 
arrival of Christianity). As far as women went, I would suggest that 
that would include only the daughters of nobility, educated privately 
(and not necessarily then) and nuns, also often of noble birth. (As a 
matter of interest, the school my daughter is about to move on to was 
founded in 604, but it didn't admit girls until 1993!) I don't know 
anything about witchcraft during the period, but I think it's 
unlikely that practitioners of native magic would be Latin speakers.

But I think it's a mistake to try to put Hogwarts' founding into a 
Muggle historical context. We're told the founders built the castle. 
Well, castles didn't exist in Britain during the Saxon period (with 
or without plumbing!)There were no large stone buildings, excepting 
some churches. OK, there was the original Westminster Abbey, sometime 
in the 900s (built by a Frenchman) but nothing else substantial and 
certainly not in Scotland.

The names of the founders don't ring true for the period, either. 
Gryffindor seems to be of French origin, more the sort of thing you'd 
get after the Norman Conquest.

So it looks to me like we either just have accept what JKR says and 
not question it too closely, or assume that already there was a rift 
between magical and non-magical folks, which means that we don't have 
to worry too much about how Helga and Rowena learned their Latin.


On a related note, it has been suggested that Latin is used for 
spells as it is a sort of lingua franka, allowing communication 
between wizards of different nationalities. 

My Latin is somewhat rusty, but I would say that many of JKR's spells 
aren't so much Latin, as Latin-derived. She uses some very odd forms 
with no consistency. To me, she's just playing with words in the same 
way she often does with names. We also have no evidence whatsoever 
that the students learn Latin, or any other language, come to that. I 
imagine too that over the years, magical practice developed and 
changed, so that perhaps when Hogwarts was founded, the spells may 
even have had different expressions and not have been in Latin. Do 
you discover a spell (do you have to *find* the magic words), or do 
you create it, embuing words with magical meaning in the process? Or 
are the words just a tool used for focussing one's power? We see 
wordless, as well as wandless magic, IIRC. But then, Hermione is 
correcting the pronunciation of 'Wingardium [what kind of a Latin 
word is that?] Leviosa', isn't she, which implies that not only the 
word, but the way it is uttered is important.

No, I think I'll just choose to live happily with the fact that the 
whole lot just doesn't work when you look too closely.

Eloise