Latin in Harry Potter

[guinevere_wood]

Latin seems to be the language of wizards.

Many charms, spells, curses, hexes, jinxes, and other HP terms are either based off of or are the Latin words for the desired effect.

Lumos: lumen, "light". Makes the wand produce light.

Nox: latin for "night" or "darkness". Extinguishes wand light.

Auror: aurora, dawn. Perfect title for a wizard that fights the Dark side.

Crucio: latin for "I torture". The torture curse.

Imperio: latin for "I command". The controlling curse.

Accio: accio, "I summon" or "I call". The summoning charm.

Aparecium: appareo, "I make visible". Used to make invisible ink appear.

Conjunctivitis Curse: coniungare, to bind together; eyes have connective tissue called the conjunctiva. This curse impairs eyesight.

Deletrius: deleo, "I erase". Makes things disappear.

Expecto Patronum: especto, "I await", and patronus, "a guardian". Produces a patronus, or guardian.

Rictusempra: rictus, "a laughing smile", and sempr, "always". Tickles.

Legilimency: legere, "to read", and mens, "mind" or "thoughts". Mind reading.

Occlumency: occludo, "I close down" and mens, "mind". Preventing one's mind from being read.

Discuss!

[mrchee]

Sectumsempra: "Cut Forever"

[guinevere_wood]

Densaugeo: dens, "tooth", and augeo, "I make grow". Makes teeth grow uncontrollably.

[Spirit]

I'm in Latin IV, so I love it when I see Latin in the Harry Potter books. I think seeing Latin in Harry Potter was what made me interested in Latin in the first place actually.

I have one to add...

Inferi: comes from 'inferius' which means the underworld.

[mrchee]

Originally Posted by Spirit

I'm in Latin IV, so I love it when I see Latin in the Harry Potter books. I think seeing Latin in Harry Potter was what made me interested in Latin in the first place actually.

I am actually irritated by her constant use of latin in the books -- just like her overly descriptive character names, most of her latinate spell names give to much away too early

She came up with the term "horcrux" when a perfectly good word for the exact thing already existed (phylactery) so I think she would have been perfectly capable of making up better terms for other magical things and spells.

[Voldemorts8thHorcrux]

http://www.mugglenet.com/search/index.php

That's the entire spells list, just to let you guys know.

[Linuxman]

Originally Posted by mrchee

I am actually irritated by her constant use of latin in the books -- just like her overly descriptive character names, most of her latinate spell names give to much away too early

She came up with the term "horcrux" when a perfectly good word for the exact thing already existed (phylactery) so I think she would have been perfectly capable of making up better terms for other magical things and spells.

I think more people would read "Horcrux" and be able to pronounce and understand it better than "phylactery" ,I think she did a great job making up there words.

[Voro_Letum]

Latin would be a good choice for spells, because then they would be the same in any language (like Scientific Names for plants and animals).

[DocHollidaywe]

I think we can look at it because that is when and where wizards started to stand out in society.

It was the language they knew, so perhaps that is why.

If that is not why, perhaps it is because like mentioned in your post, the words are the latin form of what is happening ... that makes sense ...

[guinevere_wood]

You guys know that at least SS has copies in Latin?

And even though Latin is considered by many to be a 'dead' language, Jo's critcs say that in HP, it is anything but dead! How cool is that?

There's always this classic:

Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.

[unconvinced]

Originally Posted by guinevere_wood

Legilimency: legere, "to read", and mens, "mind" or "thoughts". Mind reading.

despite what Snape says

[HermioneGR]

Spells may not be in Latin in foreign editions though.In the Greek edition spells are in Greek which is not at all nice(one of the reasons which I don't read the books in Greek....e.g lumos is :light up!)Does anyone else know of other languages?

[griffiegrrl]

Originally Posted by mrchee

I am actually irritated by her constant use of latin in the books -- just like her overly descriptive character names, most of her latinate spell names give to much away too early

Not so to me; When we learn the spell to begin with we know what it's going to do so the name spoils nothing. The first time LUMOS was uttered light sprouted from the wandtip, so we knew at the same time what it was going to do already.

Plus, thinking in the pure fictional world of Harry Potter, many old things and traditional things WOULD be in latin. It also makes sense to me because the latin would have tradtionally (long ago) Been semi-commonly used, and it would make sense to make up spells using ancient Latin.


(Oh, and whoever said they are taking Latin -- Me too! :3)

[xoxtapdancexox]

when i read the HP books for the first time, i immediately recognized that all the spells are a form of latin

[Voldemorts8thHorcrux]

I wish I took latin, I know some, from Harry Potter, but that's about it

[mariebeth83]

Originally Posted by Voldemorts8thHorcrux

I wish I took latin, I know some, from Harry Potter, but that's about it

I agree, I wish I'd taken the opportunity to learn it in school now!

My theory on the use of latin is that it would have been one of the widest spoken languages, especially at the time of the Roman Empire, and as several modern day languages come from Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) then it would have been quite logical to leave many of the spells in their original Latin version. I'd like to know if witches & wizards in Asia would use these spells or if they would have spells in Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean etc?

[guinevere_wood]

Originally Posted by unconvinced

despite what Snape says

Originally Posted by HermioneGR

Spells may not be in Latin in foreign editions though.In the Greek edition spells are in Greek which is not at all nice(one of the reasons which I don't read the books in Greek....e.g lumos is :light up!)Does anyone else know of other languages?

What do you mean by other languages?

[mariebeth83]

Originally Posted by guinevere_wood

What do you mean by other languages?

I think that she means by this do we know of any other languages that the spells might have been translated into - like if the book is translated into Polish were the spells also translated?

I don't know of any other languages the spells might have been translated to as I've only ever read them in English

[guinevere_wood]

I believe someone already commented that the Greek version has Greek translations of the spells.

As for Romantic languages, I don't think they'd be changed, since those languages (i.e. French, English) are Latin-based.

[Voldemorts8thHorcrux]

Most languages are latin based, so I highly doubt the spells are translated in the European countries. However, I'm not too sure about Asian. (I'm chinese myself, but I'm not too big on reading it, so stupid and hard)