But Sikidy is not a "West African dialect" Sikidy is the name of a form of divination performed by throwing acacia seeds to the ground and seeing the pattern they make, just as the I Ching is based on throwing sticks
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"Sikidy" here is a synonym for "geomancy" The "West African dialect", the language, is *Malagasy* It's extremely sloppy and obnoxious to confuse the two, like if I said "Aquarius is a word from the Mediterranean European dialect of Zodiac" Only I spelled it "Zociad"
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But even that, in and of itself, is not the most embarrassing thing The most embarrassing thing is "Alohomora" does not mean "favorable to thieves" "Alohomora" is one of the sixteen signs of Sikidy, it's just derived from the Arabic "al-humra", "the red one" (like "Alhambra"
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What happened is JKR saw a chart of the 16 signs of Sikidy and noticed that *part of the description of Alohomora* says that it's "favorable to thieves" And then she went and decided that's literally what the word *meant* https://www.serenapowers.com/sikidy.html
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That's... ridiculously embarrassing Like it's such a dumb dilettante mistake to make And she's immortalized it as part of her extremely popular children's books and now kids all over the world are repeating her stupid misconception
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Like imagine if I looked over a chart of the Western Zodiac and fixated on one bizarre random thing -- "Pisces are especially known for their love of music" And then I went and made my wizard book where the Pisces Potion specifically gave you the ability to play the guitar
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And when I was asked what the origin of the Pisces Potion was I totally misremembered the details and just said "Well, in the Northern European dialect of Zociad, the word Pisces means 'good at music'" And then all the Asian people in the world thought that's what it meant
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It's just a huge pile of Wrong in one single Fun Fact from the Harry Potter-verse
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Misremembering Madagascar as being in "West Africa" Confusing the Malagasy language with the divination practice of Sikidy Misspelling Sikidy "Sidiki" And then thinking one aspect of the sign was the sign's whole meaning
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Hi Arthur, I'm from Madagascar and I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you clarifying all this. These days, it's incredibly easy to take things at face value.
if an author uses a real language in her children's fantasy book, get the facts straight.
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