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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It's just... really fucking lazy and disrespectful It would not be a big deal -- it would be depressingly par for the course -- if it were just some random fantasy book But of course it's a big deal now because the books became a big deal And she never raised her standards
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Replying to @arthur_affect
This is so key. She wrote a random YA fantasy novel and rushed it and was lazy. But when that book became a 'phenomenon' she made no effort to up her game. Quite the opposite, the books get progressively sloppier
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Replying to @Sarah_May1
Right I keep saying this For a random fantasy novel from some random white lady this is all par for the course It started getting really bad and offensive when we collectively elevated her to "voice of a generation" level without her having earned it
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And now she's doing real damage to vulnerable people from atop that platform, and those of us who helped put her there have to reckon with that Everyone who bought into the cult of personality and whispered in her ear she was a genius helped create this monster
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