Note that this seems to contradict the glowing bat experiments performed in chapter 22.
“Seriously? You seriously have to say Oogely boogely with the duration of the oo, eh, and ee sounds having a ratio of 3 to 1 to 2, or the bat won’t glow? Why? Why? For the love of all that is sacred, why?”
It may be that this is only true for some spells? Although, to be honest, I’m leaning towards it either being a typo or not an incantation, just communication with Hogwarts.
If doing magic for more time makes one stronger (which seems to be a hypothesis taken seriously in HPMR), then it is possible that as one gets more powerful, the increased power can compensate for the incorrect pronunciation. In fact, this also may explain to some extent how less powerful witches and wizards can’t cast some spells. In some cases it may be that the orally transmitted version of the spell is not quite right, but that doesn’t matter as much for the more powerful spellcasters. A problem with this hypothesis is that one would then expect there to be weak spells which could only be cast by powerful mages and we haven’t seen any indication of that.
Point against: Professor Whatsisname, the presumably quite-powerful dueling legend, learned/developed “Stuporfy”, which is intentionally meant to sound almost exactly like “Stupify”. If powerful wizards get a pass on their pronunciation, how is it that a powerful wizard can effectively differentiate those two similar spells when casting?
Note that this seems to contradict the glowing bat experiments performed in chapter 22.
It may be that this is only true for some spells? Although, to be honest, I’m leaning towards it either being a typo or not an incantation, just communication with Hogwarts.
If doing magic for more time makes one stronger (which seems to be a hypothesis taken seriously in HPMR), then it is possible that as one gets more powerful, the increased power can compensate for the incorrect pronunciation. In fact, this also may explain to some extent how less powerful witches and wizards can’t cast some spells. In some cases it may be that the orally transmitted version of the spell is not quite right, but that doesn’t matter as much for the more powerful spellcasters. A problem with this hypothesis is that one would then expect there to be weak spells which could only be cast by powerful mages and we haven’t seen any indication of that.
Point against: Professor Whatsisname, the presumably quite-powerful dueling legend, learned/developed “Stuporfy”, which is intentionally meant to sound almost exactly like “Stupify”. If powerful wizards get a pass on their pronunciation, how is it that a powerful wizard can effectively differentiate those two similar spells when casting?
Yes, that undermines the suggestion considerably.
This might be different when you’re manipulating unthinking magic system rather than addressing a sentient entity such as the sorting hat.