Snape and toads WAS: Re: Snape and Umbridge and abuse again/ Ending for Snape

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 162982

> > Pippin:
> > Thorough research?
> >
> > "The horned toad is not a toad" is one of those 'fun facts' about
> > the English language that us Hermione types absorb as children:
> > (eg, "grey horses are white","a starfish is not a fish") and I have
> > known it for fifty years. It's possible, of course that JKR didn't
> know
> > this, even though she does identify with Hermione, but I think
> > it's fairly common knowledge among native speakers.
> >
> > Maybe we should take a poll?

 
> Alla:
> I would like to report that my obsessiveness erm
 passion reached new 
> level. Pippin, I am happy to report that I actually conducted a 
> minipoll in my office, tee hee.
> 
> I polled fifteen attorneys in my office and while I do not know if 
> they qualify under your standards as Hermione types, they are **all** 
> native speakers and rather well educated people.
> 
> Eleven people responded so far and only two of them knew that horned 
> toads are lizards. Everybody else's answer was that when they hear 
> that, they think of the toads.
> 


Neri:
Why not ask JKR?

As I pointed out in the original thread, the horned toads that Neville
gutted could not be lizards, because he canonically returned to the
Gryffindor common with "frog gut" under his fingernails (GoF, Ch. 14).

Now, some of you (like Ginger in the original thread) might have a
problem with this because frogs are not toads either. But
interestingly, I've learned since then about a canon development: it
turns out that a list of corrections to the UK edition of GoF were
released by Bloomsbury in the summer of 2004. You can find this list here:

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/gf/changes_gf.html

These changes are now recognized by the Lexicon as canon (they
include, among others, the correction of the infamous order of Lily
and James's echoes coming out of Voldemort's wand). And as it turned
out, JKR also corrected the "frog guts" under Neville's fingernails to
"toad guts". In the American edition, AFAIK, "frog guts" was not
changed, but I would be glad to hear from anybody here who has a new
paperback GoF.

Now, what can we learn from this? To me it's obvious that JKR doesn't
know that horned toads are lizards. She think they belong to the order
Anura (frogs and toads). This is why she wrote "frog guts" in the
beginning, and when she corrected it she changed it to "toad guts", in
order to clarify that these guts were indeed from the toads that
Neville gutted. 


Neri, who didn't know that grey horses are white.