Last night Damian Conway talked about Lingua-Romana-Perligata as part of his “Fun with Dead Languages” talk. He makes the point that Latin’s suffixes don’t constrain the word order. Given Harry’s dream of destroying Azkaban and Dumbledore in Ch 79 muttering strange incantations that sounded not quite like Latin and echoed in their ears in an unusually creepy fashion, maybe Latin provides a larger space to search for a mnemonic phrase that the Source of Magic will match and action, than languages with a more constrained grammar.
Last night Damian Conway talked about Lingua-Romana-Perligata as part of his “Fun with Dead Languages” talk. He makes the point that Latin’s suffixes don’t constrain the word order. Given Harry’s dream of destroying Azkaban and Dumbledore in Ch 79 muttering strange incantations that sounded not quite like Latin and echoed in their ears in an unusually creepy fashion, maybe Latin provides a larger space to search for a mnemonic phrase that the Source of Magic will match and action, than languages with a more constrained grammar.
There’s also
Not to mention the Sumerian Simple Strike Hex. Mahasu doesn’t sound much like Latin.
I believe it’s meant to be Sumerian
Do we know if the consonants matter, or is just the ratio of vowel sounds?
Presumably that was one of the ideas that Harry checked with Hermione in the beginning of the fic.
Yes, I’m sure they know. Do we know?
Oh, I see. Not that I recall and not that a(n admittedly cursory) search of the book turned up.