We all know that the spell names in Harry Potter are bad Because JK Rowling doesn't actually know any Latin and doesn't look it up, even when she was getting million-dollar advances to look it up So you get stuff like "Imperio!" ("To the empire!")
-
Show this thread
-
Replying to @arthur_affect
She wasn't, though. She was being paid many-million dollar advances to write entertaining books. If she wants to claim Latin is a corrupted form of the Sorceror's Tongue, similar in some ways but not identical, then she's not a mile from Tolkien's handling of Elvish.
3 replies 0 retweets 11 likes -
Replying to @BofingerDavid
Okay, fine I think her use of "Alohomora", to anyone who actually knows what it means and where it comes from (which is a regrettably small minority), is cringey and awkward as hell I think that that's a generally shitty thing to do to minority cultures from other countries
4 replies 1 retweet 69 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Dog-Latin, whatever, you're riffing on stuff all the bored posh white kids were forced to learn in school It doesn't cost that much effort to make it more correct, and there will be people who will be pleased by you doing so -- but sure, you don't have to, it's just a book
1 reply 1 retweet 48 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
But it's the careless and sloppy appropriation from other cultures that looks really bad I mean, look, this is *actual misinformation* that has spread like wildfire all over the Internet -- it's actively *impeding* people learning about real-life Sikidy who want to learn
1 reply 1 retweet 56 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Like, if she'd just put the word in her book because it sounded cool, and then in interviews owned up to it and said "I didn't know what it meant, I put it in my book because it sounded cool", that'd be one thing But she LIED Not in the book, in real life, she lied to people
1 reply 3 retweets 51 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
She said that bullshit about borrowing from "the West African dialect of Sidiki a word that means 'friendly to thieves'" in a court case, in the specific context of proving how much research she'd done in order to shore up her IP rights to the Harry Potter universe
2 replies 4 retweets 52 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
It was a shitty thing to do It was a *minor* shitty thing to do, but it makes her look bad, and it very much ties in to her cavalier treatment of facts throughout the history of the Harry Potter franchise and in her attempts at being a Twitter public intellectual
1 reply 3 retweets 51 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Again, I have to point out how much of a slap in the face it is when something like Harry Potter takes over the Google search results for a real thing from your own culture
5 replies 3 retweets 57 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect
Did she do that on purpose? Or was it fans not under her control?
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
For the record, the offending paragraph that's all over Google is not from the book itself It's from the JKR vs RDR court case, where JKR very smugly mocks Steven Vander Ark's speculation on the etymology of Alohomora, which he guessed came from the Hawaiian "Aloha"
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
She was doing this in public in order to flex and make herself look smart to all her fans She actually dunked on Vander Ark asking why he didn't "do some actual research" The fucking stones on this ladypic.twitter.com/FD8czzA5jh
2 replies 2 retweets 14 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect
So she said it was easy to research, which it probably was, and then the fact of her saying it made it impossible to research. That's practically quantum mechanics.
0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.