Latin and spells

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 160606

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at ...>
wrote:

> Seca :
> << 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.

Catlady:
> There is a theory that the incantation (the magic word/s) for a spell
> consists of two 'words', one referring to the action and one to the
> object. "Accio Firebolt" and "Locomotor trunk" are kind of obvious
> examples; 'Mobilicorpus' and 'Mobiliarbus' consist of the action
> 'Mobili' and the object, corpus = body and arbus = tree. A listie
> suggested that 'Alohomora'is the action, 'aloho' = welcome me, plus
> the object, 'mora' = wall. The new learner must say both words while
> forming the intention in his/her mind; a more experienced wizard need
> speak only the action word because his/her trained intention is enough
> to specify the object; a highly skilled mage needs only wand and
> intention: for him/her, no words are necessary; Dumbledore needs only
> intention (referred to somewhere as 'wandless magic').

> Jordan Random:
> << Out of curiosity, any thought on why 'wingardium' instead of
> 'penna'? 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. >>

> And 'Alohomora' is neither Aramaic nor Latin.

Catlady:
> The incantation ('magic words') for Potterverse spells are, as Jordan
> said, this weird mix of things that sound like Latin and things that
> sound like Aramaic and things that sound like English and things that
> kind of sort of sound like Hawaiian (Aloho / Aloha).

Geoff:
Back in message 158256, I wrote:

<quote>
"I think Tonks has provided the answer. During the currency of the
Roman Empire, a large number of countries were under the control
of the Empire. These countries spoke their own languages and thus
the Empire, for the purposes of administration and rule made Latin
a lingua franca. Since the early Christian church was also expanding
at this period in history, a similar thing happened and, of course,
Latin is often still used in the same capacity in the Catholic church
even today.

So, it is understandable that Latin spells would have developed in
the same way. It needs to be remembered that a huge number of
technical words in contemporary English use Latin - and sometimes
Greek - roots in their construction.

Although I spent my professional career as a teacher of Maths and
later Computing, I took Latin at grammar school to exam level in
the Fifth Year and have never ever regretted doing so. It is a
marvellous portal to understanding language."
</quote>

However, I have commented in the past that either JKR's Latin is
not up to scratch or that, for some reason best known to herself,
she has distorted her Latin.

Let's look at some examples. Is "Mobiliarbus" supposed to mean
"Move the tree"? "Mobili-" seems to be related to "mobilis" which
means, among other things, moveable but is an adjective and not
a verb. The verb to move is "moveo", so the imperative should be
"Move-". A tree is "arbor", so should our spell be "Movearbor"?

In "alohamora", if the end is supposed to be related to the Latin
for wall, then it should be "murus". I must admit that the "Aloha-"
smacks of Hawaiian to me though I cannot imagine mediaeval
wizards wearing multicoloured shirts or grass skirts!

"Finite Incantatem". Curiously, this appears to be a plural "finish"
and the correct version of "spell" is "Incantamentum", hence we
ought to have "Finite Incantamenta" = "finsh the spells".

Finally, the famous "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus" - never
tickle a sleeping dragon. "Titillandus" is, I suspect, a gerundive, a
verbal adjective. We need here here another Imperative, so we
should have "titilla".

Overall, I believe that JKR wants her spells to have a basically Latin
feel - other than particularly "Avada Kedavra" about which she has
commented. This is perhaps similar to Carl Jenkin's "Adiemus" songs
which sound like Latin but ain't!

End of Classics lesson.
:-)