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Charlie Weasley had some success in his attempts to train dragons (or at least Ron claimed as much).

But does the history of the Potterverse detail any dragon with an ability to talk to people, or to communicate with people in any other way?

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  • Perhaps my English is not good enough for this subject. I don't refer to training as a way of communication. For me it's rather a way how Charlie gets to know something about dragons' nature. But in this particular case I'm more interested in talking dragons, not Charlie's trainings. The matter of talking dragons came to my mind after discussion in this thread: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/33196/… I've added this sentence as the only background fact I know about.
    – Darek Wędrychowski
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 2:46
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    Depends who you ask. I'm sure Hagrid would consider the many burns, bites, and scratches he got courtesy of Norbert to be clear signs that Norbert was communicating with his mummy.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 16:44
  • We can train dogs, but they can't talk...
    – marcellothearcane
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 11:34

3 Answers 3

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Ron relays to Harry in Philosopher's Stone, ‘You can’t tame dragons, it’s dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie’s got off wild ones in Romania.’ So I'm not convinced Charlie had any success training a dragon, although he certainly does work with them.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them lists ten breeds of dragons, none of which are described as having the ability to talk.

Dragons that are aggressive toward humans are perhaps showing a rudimentary kind of communication when they attack; but on the other hand, a dragon's aggression might merely be primal. The book Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper’s Guide might shed some light on this, but we don't know what's in this book.

Hagrid, naturally, believed he could communicate with Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback, but Hagrid probably had a different concept of what constitutes ‘communication' between humans and ‘interestin' creatures'.

As far as I can find, there is no canon reference to dragons that ultimately end up talking or communicating with humans in a meaningful way.

The only possible exception to this, I think, would be the possibility that when a wand with a dragon heartstring core chooses a wizard, perhaps the connection the wand and wizard shares is a form of communication: ‘The wand chooses the wizard.’ Mr Ollivander says in Philosopher's Stone that no two dragons are exactly alike, just as no two phoenixes or unicorns are.

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    Definitely no rush -- other people might have better answers :)
    – Slytherincess
    Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 3:20
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If dating back and the past Potterverse history reflected that of Merlin during King Arthur's court, then there may be the possibility that talking dragons did exist.

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I have canonical PROOF that the dragons in the Harry Potter universe, dragons can speak English to humans (or at least wizarding humans)

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 2) when they are busting out of Gringott's bank on the back of the iron belly, right before the dragon flies up and crashes through the ceiling of the lobby, and out into the world. I'd say, a good 15-20 seconds before he breaks the glass ceiling with Potter and company if you listen carefully as the Iron Belly dragon rears his head (and immediately before he flies upward and through the glass ceiling of Gringott's) he says in a very low and lulled tone,

"THANK YOU"

Personally I am assuming that any event found in any one of the Harry Potter films is considered to be concrete fact, and hence, canonical.

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    This doesn't answer the question. If you have proof that dragons in Harry Potter can talk, please kindly share it now, or your answer will get deleted.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 10:36
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    While the dragon definitely makes a lot of noises, none of them sound like actual words to me. I think you're mistaken, and possibly hearing words where there are none because you want to hear them.
    – Anthony Grist
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 8:23
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    I've listened to it repeatedly and I can't hear anything that sounds like "thank you". There's nothing in the script or the book, either
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 8:29
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    @RussellKing - At some point you're going to need to accept that you're just imagining it. Sorry.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 19:13
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    I'm retracting my downvote since this is now an answer (and one that's based upon a close attention to a canon source at that). I'm not upvoting because I dont think it's possible to definitively say that this is a talking dragon. It could be a sighing goblin or anything. If it is dragonspeak then I suspect that it was a sneaky sound editor sneaking in a very well hidden Easter egg rather than anything approved by Rowling or the scriptwriters. After all, dragons don't talk anywhere else in canon so why should this one? Nice spot, @RussellKing, anyhow.
    – The Dark Lord
    Commented Sep 10, 2017 at 23:18

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