Magic/Languages and Bill as Curse Breaker (was:BIll Weasley as DADA?)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 116668


LisaMarie wrote:
<snip>
> > Magic and languages.  This makes me wonder: Are there language
barriers in the magical world?  <snip> Are the spells universal (read:
accessible to users of any language), or are they language-specific? 
An example may help me illustrate my question.  I'll use Bill Weasley.
><discussion of Bill's job as curse on Egyptian tombs snipped by
Christopher>

Christopher Nehren responded:
> The "language of magic" seems to be (for the most part, anyway) an
> amalgamation of Latin, pseudo-Latin, and Aramaic. Consider all of
the different languages in just the areas surrounding Hogwarts:
various types of English, numerous Celtic and Gaelic dialects, and so
forth -- even some Teutonic influences in the earlier forms of what
I'll call English for lack of a better term. All of these different
people have collaborated and devised the usage of mostly Latin and
some Aramaic <snip> for the purpose of using magic. <snip>

Carol responds:
I think Christopher (along with Geoff in his response) has pretty much
covered the "language of magic" as a lingua franca of sorts from early
Christian times, or even pre-Christian early Roman times, to the
present. But the Egyptian curses that Bill is breaking predate both
Christianity and the Romans. They would have to be recorded in
heiroglyphic form, if recorded at all, and the spoken language would
most likely have been Coptic or some earlier form of Egyptian. Which
brings us back to Lisa Marie's question about Bill: Can he break the
curses using the Latin/Aramaic hypbrid language used in the modern
spells? Or would he have to know the countercurses in the original
languages? Obviously we can't answer the question definitively, but
what does anyone think and why?

Carol