[HPforGrownups] Re: Language point that may have been missed

[Cristina Angelo]

No: HPFGUIDX 54400

--- FlamingStar Chows <flamingstarchows at att.net>
wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Eric Oppen
> > <snip> Later on, even in a very stressful
situation,
> when she's speaking to
> her sister whom she'd
> given up for dead in the lake, she's speaking
> English.  "It was ze
> grindylows..."
> 
>  
> ----Me----
> 
> I don't think so.  First, the book is in English, so
> what would they do?
> they can't exactly have subtitles like the movies. 
> I imagine she speaks
> whatever language the book is translated into.
> 
> Also, Fleur states that she want to come back to
> "work on her English."  She
> could deliberately be concentrating on speaking
> English.  By the time the
> second task had rolled around, she had already been
> at Hogwarts for a number
> of months and may be speaking English out of habit
> by then.  In spite of her
> accent, her English may be much better than we
> think.
> 
> ~Cathy~
> 

Peut-tre je peut mettre mes deux cents ici... I don't
think there's any situation in the HP books where
another language is used. These are children books,
and kids don't usually know other languages, and may
be slightly put off by translating footnotes.

I'm portuguese and live in France. I read PS and CS in
portuguese, PoA and Gof in english, but none in
french, apart from stuff in sites. In portuguese, for
instance, none of the names are translated. In french,
school and houses names are translated (Hogwarts
becoming PoudLard, making me actually understand the
joke...). I know there's someone from Finland here,
maybe an input would be interesting.

As I currently deal with three languages, my native
portuguese, my heart and soul's english, and my
everyday life french, I understand your point on she'd
been living with English and could automatically blurt
out those words in english, out of habit. But
considering she's talking half to herself half to her
sister IMHO, I'd put it more into a writer's choice of
adaptation to its public. Eg, I talk to myself alone a
lot, and tend to do it in french now (forced myself to
do it in order to learn the language...). But if my
emotions are in stake, I'll go from first expressions
in french (c'est pas vrai, pas possible, etc) to
portuguese. If I'm in danger or in pain, portuguese is
my first choice.

BTW, if JFK made Krum speak russian in the book, would
she use cyrilik? :-)

Back to lurking!

"Cristina"

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