Harry's B-day Re: Riddle and Grindelwald in 1945

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 109322

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, macfotuk at y... wrote:

RMM:
> <snip>
> > We find Jo Rowling making atrocious mistakes 
> <snip>
>  Sincerely perplexed by poor math skills,

macfotuk:
> I am NOT trying to be a killjoy, cynic or anything else here (I am 
> as much into analysing this stuff - to my partner's amazement) as 
> the rest of you, but whenever numbers and consistency start to be 
> required you REALLY have to take everything with a liberal pinch of 
> salt. We are all trying to guess what's in JKR's mind, not least 
> because she's told us the books have enough clues to allow us to do 
> this - it doesn't mean she'll make it easy. The number of red 
> herrings is enormous.

Geoff:
I realise you are but, at the risk of appearing discourteous, several 
of us on the group have had our answers to RMM dismissed as bad 
maths, bad English and nowhere along the line has he accepted the 
possiblity that he might just be wrong. I have, on numerous occasions 
in the past acknowledged that I have misread something or 
misunderstood but here, we have a storm in a teacup which has erupted 
because I casually remarked that JKR had got the day of Harry's 
birthday wrong. I'm not blasting her for that; it is just that, as 
someone else has said, there are more important things to consider. I 
doubt whether the denouement of Book 7 hinges on whether Harry's 
birthday was a Tuesday or a Wednesday.

Let us return though to some of the evidence which RMM submits. 
Because English depends so much on prepositions, the position of an 
adverbial or adjectival phrase is important because a misplaced one 
can distort the meaning of a sentence. In Latin, for example, the 
case endings meant that word order was very fluid. Our famous - or 
infamous - "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus" could be expressed 
using several different word orders but a Latin speaker will still 
understand it. In the way in which it is quoted on the Hogwarts 
motto, the first Latin word, "Draco", is the last, "dragon", in the 
translated English sentence.

If you were to approach a cross-section of native English speakers 
with the phrase "Investigations continue into the break-in at 
Gringotts on 31 July...", I would be willing to predict that the 
majority, if not all, would interpret this as the robbery being on 
the date given because, if 31 July referred to the investigation, the 
phrase is at the wrong end of the sentence.

Re Harry's comment, he makes the remark immediately after reading the 
quoted section. If there was further information which might suggest 
that the investiagtion was indeed continuing on the 31st after the 
event, why isn't it in the quoted section which Harry reads and would 
it be the first day of an investigation or an on-going one which 
makes Harry's comment questionable. I suspect this is a red herring.

Finally, Ted the weatherman. Suppose I say on a Wednesday, "I am 
going to London next week". That does not necessarily mean in exactly 
a week, i.e. the following Wednesday; it could be the Monday or the 
Tuesday etc. Again, if RMM is being pedantic and Ted is saying that 
Bonfire Night is exactly a week hence, that isn't the case based on 
Tuesday 27/10/81 because Bonfire Night that year was on its normal 
date, 5th November, the Thursday of the following week.

I rest my case.