Why Latin / foreign students / abracadabra

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 186112

k12listmomma Shelley wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/186094>:

<< Actually, a simple answer to "why Latin at all" might simply date back to a time when only the most learned men had formal studies in magic, similar to the dark ages when only monks could read and kept learning alive, if the general population did not have access to magic schools. Those select few would have been educated in Latin, meaning most of the spells they created would have Latin names as part of keeping that learning segregated from the general population. >>

Carol, in the same thread, wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/186108>:

<< Anyone in the West who was literate read and wrote in Latin. The only education was provided by the Church or by clerics. Even kings and emperors were often illiterate in the so-called Dark Ages. (I like the story of Charlemagne keeping the alphabet under his pillow and struggling to learn it.) Even though Alfred the Great and others promoted literacy in their own languages (in his case, anglo-saxon) as well as Latin, their intention was primarily to spread Christianity (equivalent in their minds to "civilization"). Until the founding of Hogwarts around AD 1000, those Muggle scholars, mostly monks, would have been the only teachers available to young Wizards (unless they were home-schooled). >>

The question is how much the wizarding general population was separate from the Muggle general population in Antiquity, Late Antiquity aka Early Middle Ages, and High Middle Ages. In the Potterverse, I believe they were in contact (all those court wizards and village witches really were wizards and witches) but the wizarding folk had enough view of themselves as a separate community that they were able to elect their own separate government, such as the Warlocks Council and Chief Wizard Barbarus Bragge. They had owl mail as a much more reliable postal system than European Muggles had then, and they had Apparation and broomstick flight and hippogriff flight to get together in person. 

In Britain, the wizarding culture did not collapse as much as the Muggle culture did when the Romans left, as shown by the ability of the Ollivander family wand making business to keep track of the exact year the business was founded. I think they never lost their business records to fires, wars, or similar disruptions.

The magical community as a separate community would be very concerned to teach their children magic, with whatever language and literacy that involved... Somehow I am reminded of Jews in the Diaspora who managed to teach Hebrew/Aramaic language and literacy to most of their sons without attending monastery schools, and they didn't even have owl mail. Home schooling, tutors, little bitty schools paid for by parents and donors... I don't think most wizards and witches would have been willing to entrust their children to Muggle teachers, regardless of being monks.

The wizarding community as a separate community would be more concerned to keep their magical learning away from learned Muggles than from unlearned wizards. 

The wizarding community may have been multiple communities separated by language, with British, Gaelic, Pictish, Saxon, and Latinate speaking communities. If so, translation spells (a pebble to put in your mouth so all your listeners hear you in their own language, or a feather to put in your ear so you hear everything in your own language) must have been valuable.

samajdar_parantap wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/186096>:

<< In case [the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students] attend Hogwarts classes - I doubt their curriculum can integrate seamlessly. >>

Nowadays in developed countries, most Muggles think that the exchange student advantages of experiencing a foreign country and meeting foreign friends (and hopefully improving one's ability to speak their language) outweigh the disadvantages of adjusting to the host country's curriculum.

Geoff wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/186106>:

<< Wikipedia seems (snip) closer to JKR's spelling and use (snip) avra kedavra, which means "what was said has come to pass" or "caused to perish like the word."'>>

Thanks! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra> While 'what was said has come to pass' resembles modern phrases like 'so mote it be' and 'as I have said, so it be done', 'caused to perish like the word' seems more relevant to the 'inverted cone' shown in the Wikipedia article 'as an incantation to be used as a cure for fevers and inflammations'. The word vanishes in the inverted cone and the fever vanishes as well. Maybe I should try it on my current obnoxious cold.