CHAPDISC: HBP 2, Spinner's End

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 142088


Carol:
> I read the article Potioncat linked to elsewhere and agree (based on
> my limited knowledge as an American) that Spinner's End is probably in
> Yorkshire. However, JKR has an excellent ear for accents (e.g., Hagrid
> and Seamus) and I hear nothing of Yorkshire dialect in Snape. Maybe
> his mother spoke the gentrified English of the Prince family, with
> something like a BBC accent? Snape's speech is that of a cultivated
> and educated man, not one who grew up in a derelict Muggle
> neighborhood. 


Me: 

It's actually Snape's speech that made me picture him as a low-class
boy who reinvinted himself.  It's too perfect, to the point of being
stilted-- compare his speech to the upper-class Draco or Sirius. Even
Lucius Malfoy doesn't use such convoluted phraseology.  I like the
idea of a mum who married beneath herself in class as well as magic,
but I can still picture young Snape carefull practicing his elocution
with a tape-recorder and the BBC.  

-- Sydney