Timeline for Are there any in-book clues that the T in "Voldemort" is silent, and why did the movies choose to pronounce the T?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 20, 2021 at 21:16 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | @DoscoJones Travel further, see how French serves you and report back. Throughout 20th C and until now, all children in Britain have received more than a modicum of education in French. There are not "many reasons" for that. There are not now and never were any good reasons. When you've travelled much through Europe, you will see that the most - prolly, only - useful reason was simply to use another language against which to compare or contrast English. Spanish, Latin or Greek would do as well; German better. The one reason to learn French is, France is our neighbour. | |
| Nov 20, 2021 at 1:44 | comment | added | Dosco Jones | @robbie in the first half of the 20th century it was traditional for children of the educated classes in Britain the receive a modicum of French language education in school. There are many reasons for this. See tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09571736.2017.1382052, etc. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 23:07 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | @Dosco Jones Doubtless, most Americans don't speak French - and while I'm struggling with the terminology here, neither do most other people whose first language is anything other than French… certainly not most Britons… | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 9:08 | comment | added | IMSoP | @Kevin It doesn't matter how simple the rules are if you've never learned them - for all I know, Polish pronunciation rules are simple, I have literally no idea. I was taught French in school from the age of 7, and went there on holiday pretty much every summer of my childhood, and that's common in the UK. I've been on holiday in Spain twice and Italy once, so pretty much learned "hello" and "thank you" in both languages. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 0:54 | comment | added | Mitchell van Zuylen | When I read the books, as a 12 year old, I picked up on the intend French pronunciation despite barely knowing any French. It is very easy for me to assume that the majority of readers from my country would have picked up on it, too. Similarly, a character called De la Cruz or Von Kreuz would be assumed to not follow typical English pronunciation. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 0:29 | comment | added | Kevin | @IMSoP: To be fair, Spanish pronunciation rules are extremely simple when you compare them to French rules. Some of the rules are a little unintuitive, but you just memorize them and blindly apply them everywhere. There's no convoluted "if this letter is at the end of the word, you ignore it, but then you pronounce the other letter differently..." nonsense in Spanish. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 23:46 | comment | added | Dosco Jones | It’s a huge stretch, given that most of the senior staff were from a generation that would have had classical educations that would have included French. It’s not like ‘vol de mort’ is a hard translation problem. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 23:05 | comment | added | Ben | @TylerH The fact that Voldemort is not just vaguely French-ish spelling but actually a meaningful phrase in French is pretty decent evidence that JKR had deliberately constructed it as French from the beginning. I'll grant her this one, though I agree it's a bit of a stretch for JKR to expect her readers to pick up on this when no one in-universe ever notices (despite there even being magical French characters). | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 21:53 | comment | added | Clockwork | @TylerH Ah, gotcha. I actually didn't get that point initially. So it's basically about how she retcons all the stuffs she forgot to mention? | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 21:52 | comment | added | TylerH | @Clockwork Eh? IT has nothing to do with it (though I personally don't care if someone calls it Sequel, S Q L, or even Squirrel). It's a matter of an author with a headcanon who never bothered putting that headcanon in the work itself and then being surprised when others don't follow said headcanon. It's no different than all the other times she has since come out and claimed some fact about her story that there's zero evidence for (or worse, that there's plenty of evidence against). | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 21:50 | comment | added | Clockwork | @TylerH Since you're also in IT, I can't help but have the impression that this is very similar to things such as "how are we supposed to pronounce SQL". Some people pronounce it as "Sequel", and some as "S-Q-L". And some argue that the creators gave an official pronounciation. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 19:22 | comment | added | J... | Even the UK audiobooks, voiced by Stephen Fry, pronounces the hard 't', same as Dale and the films. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 17:16 | history | edited | V2Blast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added link to mentioned tweet
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| Nov 18, 2021 at 15:57 | comment | added | Clockwork | @TylerH I'm assuming that is partly adressed by IMSoP's comment about "French is widely taught in schools in the UK", although I see your point too. I like the idea of assuming that it should be pronounced like a French sentence. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 15:39 | comment | added | TylerH | That article seems a bit bold; it wasn't a "rogue 't' that crept in"... it was put there by the author herself. Where in the books is it ever mentioned he adopted a French origin or pronunciation of his pseudonym? He's British and basically the entire story takes place in the UK. Seems like a low-quality retcon to me. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 15:10 | comment | added | OrangeDog | @camden_kid you forgot his music career | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 13:33 | comment | added | camden_kid | Just want to add that Jim Dale isn't just a voice actor. He is (or was) a famous actor in the UK, mainly for Carry On movies, and a respected musical theatre actor. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 13:11 | vote | accept | sevensevens | ||
| Nov 17, 2021 at 20:06 | comment | added | IMSoP | @FreeMan Perhaps "the reverse" or "the flipside" would be a better choice of words: when I see Spanish names or phrases in American fiction, I often get the feeling that the author assumes I'll know not just how to pronounce them but what they mean. Jokes and references go straight over my head. My guess was that American readers might have the same experience on seeing "Voldemort". | |
| Nov 17, 2021 at 17:12 | comment | added | IMSoP | Some relevant cultural context is that French is widely taught in schools in the UK, so it's reasonable for Rowling to assume her readers would spot the French spelling. I've encountered the opposite with the use of Spanish in fiction from the USA. | |
| Nov 17, 2021 at 17:06 | history | answered | Dosco Jones | CC BY-SA 4.0 |