GoF chapter 24-26 Post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182073

zanooda:
> > 
> > According to Percy, Barty Crouch spoke over two hundred languages,
including Mermish, Gobbledegook and Troll (p. 89). I don't know how 
anyone can learn so many languages, some of then very exotic, if 
languages are not his/her profession. Maybe there is some magic 
involved :-)?

Jayne responded:
> But is Percy's say so reliable at that ime as he was obbssed with
Barty Crouch and the Ministry. He could well have been exagerating to
make his boss look good <snip>

Carol responds:
That being the case, you might consider what Ludo Bagman has to say on
the subject.

Ludo is looking for Mr. Crouch to help him understand what his
Bulgarian "opposite number" (the head of the Bulgarian Magical Sports
and Games Department) is saying. According to Ludo, Mr. Crouch speaks
"about a hundred and fifty languages."

At that point, Percy steps in, correcting the figure to "over two
hundred," and specifying "Mermish and Gobbledegook and Troll." (Fred
dismisses the ability to speak Troll as something anyone can do but
says nothing to contradict the number of languages that Mr. Crouch can
speak, nor does Mr. Weasley.) (GoF Am. ed. 89).

It seems clear that Mr. Crouch is extremely intelligent, a gifted and
powerful wizard who would probably have become the Minister for Magic
hed not his son (also, for all his faults, gifted and intelligent, one
of the few wizards that we know for certain received twelve OWLs) been
revealed as one of the DEs who Crucio'd the Longbottoms into insanity.
While the numbers (150 or more than 200) may be exaggerated (rahter
like the narrator's assertions that Hagrid's hands are as large as
trash bin lids or Slughorn takes up a quarter of the sweet shop whose
name, oddly, escapes me at the moment), but I see no reason to doubt
that Mr. Crouch speaks a large number of languages, including
Bulgarian and Mermish.

Whether magic has anything to do with it, I can't say. Maybe he simply
has a prodigious capacity for memorization (like Hermione and Snape
and presumably Dumbledore, who also knows a large number of languages,
including Mermish).

As for Percy, he is certainly overzealous regarding Mr. Crouch and the
MoM (and later, seriously mistaken regarding Dolores Umbridge and the
supposed nonreturn of Voldemort, not to mention his understandable
failure to reaize that his boss was under the Imperius Curse), but I
can't recall his ever telling an actual lie or even a half-truth, a la
Snape and Dumbledore.

Carol, suspecting that Barty Sr. speaks all the relevant languages of
fellow magical beings, along with a good number of European languages