Wizard Baruffio and the Wingardium Leviosa Charm Revisited

[secca_pk]

No: HPFGUIDX 160187

> Carol wrote:
> You're welcome. Seems that I'm more convinced by your explanation 
> than you are, though.

<snip>

> I think the bison/bifon explanation suffices. IMO,
> Baruffio meant to use the spell "Bifon!" ("surround") but 
said "Bison"
> instead and ended up with a bison (= buffalo) on his chest. Unlike
> bussalo/buffalo, no typo is required for this error, and it's
> explained by the elongated medieval s, which looks like an f.

Secca responds:
Well, as much as I'd like it to have worked, I didn't like it for 
the following reasons; 

1) [bifon/bison] Although I don't mind at all the thought of 
using /Bifon/ as a spell itself, there doesn't seem to me to be any 
reason why simply saying /Bison/ -- would summon one.

2) [accio bifon/accio bison] The Saxon term /Bifon/ is a verb. I am 
not certain if it can be turned into a noun in the way I have done. 
I tend to doubt it.

bi-fón;... to comprehend, grasp, seize, take hold of, attach, catch, 
ensnare; comprehendere, apprehendere, reprehendere, deprehendere, 
capere :... /Folm mec mæg bifón/ the hand may grasp me, to surround, 
encompass, encircle, envelop, contain, invest, clothe, case, 
receive, conceive... from 
(http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/html/oe_bosworthtoller/b0099.html)

The other reason I'm not convinced about /bifon/ is that I don't 
think it is a word Jo would have been likely to use. It is not 
latinate, nor is it tied into the mythology/folklore of 'Magic' 
as /avada kadavra/ is. This to me is not enough of a reason to 
discount it, but added with the two problems above, it seemed to tip 
the scales

> Carol again:
> Carol, sure that JKR had nothing so esoteric as Portuguese/Spanish
> Veritaserum in mind and that Baruffio simply misread "s" as "f" and
> consequently mispronounced an ordinary Latin-based spell

Well, the reason I have always thought that there might be 
a 'Portuguese solution' to this riddle is due to the fact of Jo 
living in Portugal for most of the writing of Philosophers stone. 
Her first husband, Jorge Arantes, was a Portuguese journalist. 
Having studied languages off and on myself, I know that invariably 
one comes across a word or a phrase that seems hilarious to you, the 
student, that seems mundane to a native speaker. Often these words 
or phrases become personal idioms for you and your friends. "That's 
a shower," said in french and "Ludmillia is very far away in 
Siberia" said in Russian, both have the ability, to this day, to 
transport me and certain of my friends into fits of laughter. I had 
thought it possible that, perhaps, this  whole 'Baruffio' thing was 
a personal referance of this sort, based on her learning Portuguese 
at the time. Also 'Baruffio' sounds Portuguese or Italian. But I 
have come up with nothing along this line of thinking that works... 


>> Katssirius wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/159044>:

>> like the Wizard Baruffio they may end up on the floor with a
>> Buffalo on their chest. He says that a s replaced an f. I do not 
get
>> it. Can someone help me. What did the Wizard really want to 
happen? >>

> Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) responded in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/159714>:

> That would be so much easier to spin if the F replaced an S. Accio
> Buffalo instead of Accio Bussalo, with only the need to figure out
> what Bussalo is.

> The thing that landed on his chest might have been a Water Buffalo
> (Bubalus bubalis) or an American Bison (Bison bison). but both are 
in
> the cow family, Bovidae, from Latin word for 'cow', Bos. Maybe he 
said
> Accio Bos when he meant Accio Bof. Maybe it's more closely related 
to
> levitating a feather with Wingardium Leviosa -- he meant to 
levitate a
> toad with Bufium Leviosa but instead said Busium Leviosa (of which 
I
> would never have thought if not for some long-ago post explaining 
why
> 'wingardium' is Wizardish for 'feather'.)


Secca responds:
Yes, I remember this post, as I just read it recently in my research 
of all this! You obviously came up with this theory long before I 
did. I wish I had remembered reading it before I'd made my last 
post. Other than your post, most of the other one's I saw out there 
on the web used the typo theory to support thier claim 
that 'Wingardium Leviofa' is what Barrufio said, which, as I have 
said before, I dislike..

Unfortunately, what I remembered most about your post was the error 
contained in the last paragraph. The spell is /Wingardium Leviosa/, 
not /"___" Leviosa/. The entire spell causes something to raise up 
or fly, as evidenced by Ron's use of it against the troll in the 
bathroom where he does *not* say "Clavium Leviosa" to levitate the 
club.



Random832 wrote:

> Is there a reason why most spells are latin, and , further, is 
there a
> reason why some are not? "crucio" and "imperio" are both latin, but
> "avada kedavra" is aramaic.

Secca replies:
Well there is this quote from the interview Jo gave at the Edinburgh 
book festival in 2004:

Q:There is a lot of Latin in the spells in your books Do you speak 
Latin?

JKR responds: Yes. At home, we converse in Latin. [Laughter]. 
Mainly. For light relief, we do a little Greek. My Latin is patchy, 
to say the least, but that doesn't really matter because old spells 
are often in cod Latin—a funny mixture of weird languages creeps 
into spells. That is how I use it. Occasionally you will stumble 
across something in my Latin that is, almost accidentally, 
grammatically correct, but that is a rarity. In my defence, the 
Latin is deliberately odd. Perfect Latin is not a very magical 
medium, is it? Does anyone know where avada kedavra came from? It is 
an ancient spell in Aramaic, and it is the original of abracadabra, 
which means "let the thing be destroyed". Originally, it was used to 
cure illness and the "thing" was the illness, but I decided to make 
it the "thing" as in the person standing in front of me. I take a 
lot of liberties with things like that. I twist them round and make 
them mine. (http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/news_view.cfm?id=80)

Secca again:
and this, which is only marginally relevant... comes from the 
Transcript: HARRY POTTER CHILDREN'S PRESS CONFERENCE, 9.30AM 17TH 
JULY 2005, Edinburgh, Scotland
which I found here - (http://www.raincoast.com/press-
releases/2005/0718-hbp-press-conference.html):

JK ROWLING: You know the way that most school slogans are thing like 
persevere and nobility, charity and fidelity or something, it just 
amused me to give an entirely practical piece of advice for the 
Hogwarts school motto.

Then a friend of mine who is a professor of classics -- my Latin was 
not up to the job, I did not think it should be cod Latin, it is 
good enough for cod Latin spells, that is they used to be a mixture 
of Latin and other things. When it came to a proper Latin slogan for 
the school I wanted it to be right, I went to him and asked him to 
translate. I think he really enjoyed it, he rang me up and said, "I 
think I found the exactly right word, Titillandus," that was how 
that was dreamt up.