Wait, you two just made me realize that Ash from the anime is named after a kind of tree, just like all the professors; he could grow up to be a professor himself. Am I an idiot? Was this blindingly obvious to everyone else?
(Granted, this wouldn't apply in the original Japanese version, where his name is just Satoshi... Also "Ash" is his first name, not his last.)
I guess sort of like the Sorting Hat if we think of it as choosing the houses kids subconsciously felt they would fit into, or subconsciously *knew* they were going to get accepted into.
In my school, if you had an older sibling already in a house, you got automatically places in that house too. Otherwise, it was randomly assigned.
I was in Newton house in primary school, and Hudson house in secondary school.
Ha, I was already in Newton at the time the books came out... but yeah, our houses were a little disappointing compared to Hogwarts houses! Although we did have competitions too - granted, not quidditch, but we had house music and various sporting events.
My school actually had houses too! I’m from the states, but I remember my middle school had houses. Students were randomly put into one of five houses. It’s funny because the red and green house had a huge rivalry between them, but the green house was good and the reds were evil. I was a green, and admit that I had a huge hatred for all the reds.
Dumbledore: "Filch I want you to punt the students over this swamp, I trust you in this endeavour"
Filch: Eyes gleaming with malice and barely contained glee "Yes sir, of course sir. I will wear my sturdiest boots"
D: ...
D: "Filch my man, you will be punting them over in this boat..."
F: "Oh...yes sir. Of course sir" trudges away dejectedly.
Grammar school kid here, we had prefects. In fact, much more than the ones in Hogwarts, our school had a body of prefects and several head prefects, the leader of which was the head boy/girl. Then there were subject specific prefects, too, but they generally ranked under full prefects.
In Goblet of Fire, when Hermione's refusing to eat any more at the feast and Ron's trying to entice her with desserts, he exclaims, "Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!" For the longest time, I thought that was basically a very British way of saying, "Holy crap, look! Chocolate gateau!" I didn't find out until just a few years ago that spotted dick was actually a dessert and not British slang.
They have them in some specialty shops in the US! I’ve bought them from World Market, but they’re definitely marketed as a “British” item. I’ve seen other people have Christmas crackers around but they consume British media so it makes sense.
I grew up in America, but my dad is British, and I thought Christmas Crackers were a normal thing in America cause we always had them. My mum would complain that they were hard to find, but I assumed it was because they were popular and sold out quickly. I didn’t find out until high school that they weren’t popular in America.
American: "Someone told me British people sit around eating their Christmas dinner wearing little paper crowns 😂"
Me: "haha, that's ridiculous, obviously we dont- ... Oh, wait no, the crackers... Yeah we do that"
You know, until I read your reply, I actually thought Christmas crackers were a food item and I couldn't figure out why people were so excited by saltines for Christmas. My family always called them poppers, so I was thoroughly confused.
Ha ha ha. Might check with some Indian friends of mine to see if they were common over there. For some reason I have a suspicion.
It'd be mad craic altogether if they were!
This thread is an amazing read as a British person. I have no idea that things like Christmas crackers and treacle tart (or, from the sounds of it, even just treacle) weren’t widely known.
I thought the education system with OWLs and NEWTs was so well thought out. Now I’m in the UK teaching A levels and I use HP schooling as a reference point for Americans to explain what grade level I teach.
Same I thought it was really funny until I learned about UK exams.
I guess for the US it would be closest to our ACTs and SATs. Which I guess the joke kind of works? Even though the testing process is not the same at all.
I didn't necessarily think they were magical, but the description of Bob Ogden's muggle clothes, to an American, is absolute and complete gibberish: "...a frock coat and spats over a striped one-piece bathing costume..." It's been like 15 years since my first read of book 6, I still have absolutely no idea what the hell Bob was wearing.
They’re all just old styles of clothing that are no longer worn – plenty of people would have worn them in the US too, just not for a very long time. The whole idea is that he’s wearing a muddle of outdated garments that shouldn’t go together cause he doesn’t know how muggles actually dress.
I had the opposite experience once. as a kid, I thought that those heavy wooden trunks were just a normal thing that modern british people used for packing. I was very surprised to learn that they actually do use suitcases like the rest of us
edit: apparently I was kinda right, and trunks are actually still fairly common for boarding schools. cool!
They used to be what people packed things into, before the more modern style of suitcase came into play. Like many things in the wizarding world, their stuff is often a little older in style/fashion.
Fwiw we were encouraged to bring trunks to the American all girls boarding schools I attended, mostly because they store a lot more stuff and act as like a bench at the end of your bed
I had one in the US that I took to college in the 80s. It stored anything that stayed in the dorm basement storage room over the summers (books, bedding, typewriter because I’m that old), and in my first couple of apartments doubled as a coffee table.
I just assumed every single town name was made up. Godric's Hollow? You better believe I'm filling that up. Surrey? Surreal, bro. *Elephant and Castle?* Wizard shit.
Whereas I, being passingly familiar with how *absolutely fucking bonkers* UK place names can be, assumed they were all real. I'm still disappointed there isn't actually a town called Little Whingeing in Surrey.
Treacle tart, knickerbocker glory, and Yorkshire (or really any) pudding. Pudding when I was growing up was pre-fab chocolate in little plastic cups.
Jumpers.
Edit: when I was a kid and read the HP books, I assumed Yorkshire pudding was mint chocolate. I was thinking it was like York Peppermint Patty 🤓😂😅
Eggs, flour, milk, water and salt whisked to high heaven in a magic order and roasted in beef dripping or goose fat (if available). If it's not a family recipe at least 100 years old, they won't work as well :D. I have my great-great grandmother's recipe with the excellent footnote of 'mix until it looks like worms'.
I'm very broke at the moment and have yorkshire puddings with vegetable stew most weeks. Incredible filling and very cheap.
The actress that played the housemaid Ellen (not the cook) in Marry Poppins was Hermione Baddeley. That was the first and only time outside of Harry Potter that I'd seen the name.
It's an older name and I had certainly not heard it before HP, but now it's hilariously everywhere since the Harry Potter generation started breeding. I'm a teacher and every school I've worked at for the last few years there's been at least one Hermione per year group it seems.
It's funny but also true. I feel bad for all the young Aryas and Khaleesis/Danearys' out there cause their parents were making babies at the height of Game of Thrones popularity
It did used to be in Tudor times, Heston Blumenthal found a recipe for it and made it. The historical version was alcoholic and sickly sweet. I had a go at making it and it was alright, in very, very small quantities, but it apparently crops up in a lot of very old recipe books.
Yup, rock cakes are a crumbly, buttery sort of affair with raisins or currants usually. They're rock shaped when cooked and about the size of a balled fist. My nan makes great ones.
Aww hell, I always thought it was just a steak or a burger and thought that Harry got a good meal for once lmao.
edit: AHA, it's translated as a steak in the Finnish version and that's what I've read first, so this is obviously where my confusion comes from.
I’m British but I have a few non-British friends who were surprised that people say “fancy” outside of Harry Potter. They didn’t necessarily think it was just HP but just a really old-fashioned term. Nope, I’m afraid “fancy” is a language mainstay among the youth. I believe I even told my current partner I “fancy” him.
Also, as someone who went to a traditional British boarding school, people were shocked to find the following were real too:
- Long dinner table benches (like the house benches in HP)
- Trunks to carry your stuff
- Having a hat for day wear
- Common rooms
I spent a summer in Europe when I was in college. Befriended a British guy. One night he told me he fancied my friend. I giggled delightedly and told him to say it again. He was like, say what? I was like, "tell me again that you *fancy* my friend!" It was just *so* British to hear him say that, it made me happy. (Honestly I couldn't understand half of what he said. I knew we are both speaking English but somehow there was a language...or rather, an accent barrier. He was from Doncaster, if that helps you place the accent).
I read the British version of the fourth or fifth book when it came out and was so mystified why everyone kept saying “Wotcher!” to each other. Was it a wizarding word? Were they saying “Watch out!” or “Be careful!”? It was so mysterious!
I was so disappointed when I later found out it basically just means “hello,” lol
>I read the British version of the fourth or fifth book when it came out and was so mystified why everyone kept saying “Wotcher!” to each other. Was it a wizarding word? Were they saying “Watch out!” or “Be careful!”? It was so mysterious!
>
>I was so disappointed when I later found out it basically just means “hello,” lol
Semi-related - when I first moved to the UK, people kept saying, "You all right?" to me, and I kept wondering why everyone thought I was not all right/if I was unwittingly walking around with a troubled facial expression or something. Eventually, I clocked that that was just another way of asking "How are you?".
Snogging. It’s such an odd word to me and I thought it had something to do with the snot in someone’s nose or the nose a pig makes. But nah it means kissing or making out.
As a somewhat less fortunate child, and an avid reader. I was very disappointed when I tried a Turkish delight. I kept trying them for years expecting them to be good enough to be worth getting kidnapped for.
Same. As a kid, I was like, someone get Edmund some chocolate! Gonna blow his mind.
However! Remembering the setting for *when* the story takes place--Edmund would have been living in the middle of rationing during the war. It didn't NEED to be an amazing magical confection. Just that it was sugar at all would have been an impossible and forbidden treat (never underestimate the lure of the forbidden).
So now, as an adult better understanding the context of war and scarcity (and addiction), I'm back to understanding where he was coming from. Sugar sings very sweetly when you're on a diet that forbids it...
Only as a kid?
When I was in high school, I visited a British tearoom with my mother and a friend. When it came time to order dessert, we all just sat there blushing and stammering until our server finally said "Ah, you want to try the spotted dick, don't you!" My mother will tell you that she placed the order while my friend and I giggled like schoolgirls, but nope, she was every bit as tongue-tied herself.
"Sciving", as in "sciving snack boxes". I've read the books and watched the movies and listen to the audiobooks multiple times over but until very recently I didn't know sciving was a general term for getting out of school. I thought I had more to do with the act of getting sick. We call skiving "ditching" or "skipping" school.
Yeah, in the UK it's a more general term for getting out of doing hard work. In the books Skiving Snack Boxes are meant for "faking sick" (or the UK term "pulling a sickie") basically pretending you're ill to get out of work. But a skive can be many instances of avoiding hard graft.
EG ; You work in a busy shop. You usually man the tills. 20 customers ask about \*New Product!\* Your manager doesn't know what this is. As An Employee you know \*New Product!\* won't be on the shelves till next week. No-one told the manager tho. You offer to investigate. You are off the tills and free to wander/roam around the shop. You go to Delivery. You stand out back checking your facebook, speaking to colleagues and generally wasting as much time as you think you can. You check Reddit for any interesting HP theories. Your friend that unloads the stock asks "What YOU doing back here??" You reply "Skivving!" 20 mins later you go back and tell your boss info you already knew. He feels like your misson was successful. No-one knows any different. You went for a skive.
We used pounds shillings and pence until 1971 but it had been around for almost 1,000 years at that point so the change was a big one.
You'll hear people talk about hapeneys, crowns, bob and other names but those were just slang for coins, not units of currency (If you're from the US think dime or quarter).
It seems very odd looking back from a decimalised perspective but it was based on weight and grew organically, it wasn't planned like the modern system was.
I had the opposite of this when I was younger and we visited some family in the States and they offered me a pudding cup as a snack and I was so confused when I got it! I didn’t know what I was expecting really, but to this day I still don’t know what it was I ate in that cup
Spellotape. I only learned when I was 22 that the popular British name brand tape is Sellotape and the wizard name was based off a real thing. In America we have Scotch Tape
Weirdly enough, if you walk into a shop in Scotland today it's mostly 3M Scotch brand tape and we call it Sellotape anyway.
It's extra weird because the original naming for Scotch was a racist one, implying cheap... xD
In the 7th book Xenophilius Lovegoods hair is described as being “candy-floss” like. I wasn’t 100% sure what that was, but because of floss I assumed that it would be pin straight and flaxen. Turns out candy floss is cotton candy :/
The word “Wheezes”. When I first read HBP, I was very confused. Then, I learned that a wheeze is another way of saying a joke or a prank in England.
Prefects and Head boys/girls. Thought it was a Hogwarts thing, but nope!
Wheezing is the noise you make when you can't quite breathe. Think of someone laughing really hard, to the point where they can't laugh and they just wheeze.
That’s definitely something Americans cannot relate to lol. I also feel like growing new bones wouldn’t even be covered by insurance. They’d claim it was cosmetic or something like that lol
I didn't realize how bad I'd been butchering most of the pronunciations. Seamus I pronounced as Sea-uh-mus. Hermione as Her-me-own.. when the movies started to slowly come out I was so enlightened.
That is exactly why Rowling had that 'how to pronounce my name' conversation between Hermione and Viktor Krum. Because so many non-british fans had asked her how to pronounce Hermione's name.
Imagine having these arguments in the year 2000 when you’re 12 years old and your teacher is reading it out loud and you’re the only kid who has already read all 3 books and somehow knew the pronunciation.
Listening to the books on tape helped I think for some readers.
I pronounced Sirius' name as Sigh-russ until one day I realized there was a second "i" and had a long debate on the bus as to why JKR would make someone's name "serious".
This is slightly off-topic, but it's a funny story, so I'll tell it.
I was 18 when I read Harry Potter for the first time. I knew it was a series about a magic school, but that was pretty much all I knew when I picked up *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone*. Obviously I loved it - aside from the first few chapters I read it in a single sitting - but as I got to the point where they started talking about the "sorcerer's stone," I found myself thinking, "Gee, that sounds kind of like the philosopher's stone." A bit later: "Okay, this sounds a *lot* like the philosopher's stone, I bet that was part of the inspiration for this story." Then: "It *is* the philosopher's stone! She's talking about the freaking philosopher's stone! WHY DOESN'T SHE JUST SAY PHILOSOPHER'S STONE?"
That was how I learned that popular books are often modified for international audiences. I have since become quite adept at tracking down U.K. editions of U.K. books.
(That said, I'm not *entirely* unsympathetic to whoever decided American readers of OotP would be better off with Fred and George trying to keep their spirits up during exams, rather than trying to keep their peckers up.)
Question from the US: Are the Weasley sweaters essentially ugly Christmas sweaters? Are those a thing in the UK? My assumption is that Molly made them unironically.
It's only a few decades ago that jumpers/sweaters like that weren't ironic, and it was common for mums (especially in less wealthy families) to knit their kids jumpers (maybe it was the same in the US?). I think since the wizarding world is a bit old-fashioned that way, and Molly was doing that.
The jumpers just had their initials on them, so they weren't meant to be ugly Christmas ones, but even in the 90s there was a kind of fondness over the uncoolness yet sweetness of those types of handmade jumpers. It's the type of thing your gran would do for you.
The school year starting in September. I thought that was a Hogwarts thing, but apparently it's a British thing. In Australia the school year runs from late January until early December.
Edit: Summer is December, January and February here.
That’s not even a British thing, really just a northern hemisphere thing. Haha. Although it’s common in many countries, including Britain I believe, to start in august. In Germany where I went to school as a kid, we always started in august. But the start date varies from state to state and year to year because the government is trying to prevent too much traffic by people going on holidays at the same time. In Canada, where I live, we always started school in September though.
Also the Christmas crackers, plus peppermint humbugs. And like others said, I didn’t realize prefects weren’t just a Hogwarts thing. I also was t aware that school uniforms were such a common thing in England, in the states it’s really just religious private schools (as far as I know).
Everything to do with the school system, basically. Boarding school - when I read the Philospher's Stone for the first time, I was seriously baffled by the idea of parents sending their children away for the majority of the year. The different houses - apparently that's British. Dormitories - you have to sleep in the same room with random strangers?! The school uniforms (in my country, there are no school uniforms). The Head Boy/Girl and the Prefects. Detention and suspension, actual disciplinary methods that the internet tells me are real and not just a Hogwarts thing. School tuition - primary and secondary education is free in my country, so it took me until the 6th book to realize that when Harry was worried that uncle Vernon wouldn't pay for him to go to school, he didn't just mean books and stationary. Also, having lessons all day long and having to do your homework in the evening. Not sure if that's British - probably not?
Oh, and the crazy early dinners. I'm not sure if it's true, but it always seemed to me that at Hogwarts, students ate around 5 or 6 o'clock. That's just insane to me, I'd be starving by 9pm.
What country are you from where there were no detentions or homework? And not having a full day at school either - our school day was 8:30am-4pm, then an hour or two homework a night at least. As a British person that seems so wild to me, I thought that was commonplace across the world haha.
Boarding schools are pretty rare in the UK nowadays really, they're generally quite expensive so you have to be rich to afford them
Lessons all day long and homework in the evening is a thing. Paying for education is not - Harry is basically going to a 'private school' also known in the UK misleadingly as a public school. But education IS free in the UK if you go to a state school. We have both systems running in parallel.
Until today (it was literally today) I thought that the Order of Merlin was totally, completely, 100% fictional, but I can only assume it’s based on the Order of Merit, which I have only learned about by watching The Crown on Netflix (I’m late to the party on that, but on the off chance anyone else is too, allow me to say that it’s excellent, 10/10, would recommend)
The phrase “Wotcher.” Thought it meant something along the lines of watch out or somebodys watching you every time Tonks would say it but it’s just another way to say hello.
I'm British but I've had non-British friends who were surprised when I told them that normal schools have houses, too!
How do they place students in the Houses? Edit: God enough with the sorting hat jokes
usually randomly. we'd have house points too and also a sports day where we compete in our houses (at least in my school lmao)
Exactly this. Our school houses were Ash, Oak & Elm. Ash were the best, not just because I was in it!
[удалено]
I want House Elm because my first Pokémon game was in Johto.
Wait, you two just made me realize that Ash from the anime is named after a kind of tree, just like all the professors; he could grow up to be a professor himself. Am I an idiot? Was this blindingly obvious to everyone else? (Granted, this wouldn't apply in the original Japanese version, where his name is just Satoshi... Also "Ash" is his first name, not his last.)
I didn't know House points was a thing!!! That's fantastic!!!
I guess sort of like the Sorting Hat if we think of it as choosing the houses kids subconsciously felt they would fit into, or subconsciously *knew* they were going to get accepted into.
I was in the same house as my siblings (later just brother) does that count?
At my school they made an effort to place siblings in the same house, but otherwise it was random
In my school, if you had an older sibling already in a house, you got automatically places in that house too. Otherwise, it was randomly assigned. I was in Newton house in primary school, and Hudson house in secondary school.
Was it lame? To be placed Newton or Hudson after reading of Gryffindor Slytherin and all that? lmao
Ha, I was already in Newton at the time the books came out... but yeah, our houses were a little disappointing compared to Hogwarts houses! Although we did have competitions too - granted, not quidditch, but we had house music and various sporting events.
We do this in Australia as well
My school actually had houses too! I’m from the states, but I remember my middle school had houses. Students were randomly put into one of five houses. It’s funny because the red and green house had a huge rivalry between them, but the green house was good and the reds were evil. I was a green, and admit that I had a huge hatred for all the reds.
TIL Thank you stranger
Dividing people up into groups for no reason is basically the most British thing ever
Treacle tarts
Yeah I finally figured out like a month ago that treacle is (I think!) molasses.
It is but confusingly in this case and in the case of other puddings (desserts!) it usually means golden syrup
Do you remember when Filch was “punting” people across the bog? I just learned that is a boating thing rather than kicking them like a football
Yeah it’s a touristy thing to do in Oxford/Cambridge. It’s basically manoeuvring a boat around with a big stick!
Like Venice, but with Brits!
He was always talking about how he wanted to hang the students by their thumbs, I assumed he jumped at the opportunity to kick them.
Imagine he had the same thought that we did when hearing the order and he gets super excited and then super disappointed.
Dumbledore: "Filch I want you to punt the students over this swamp, I trust you in this endeavour" Filch: Eyes gleaming with malice and barely contained glee "Yes sir, of course sir. I will wear my sturdiest boots" D: ... D: "Filch my man, you will be punting them over in this boat..." F: "Oh...yes sir. Of course sir" trudges away dejectedly.
Tbf as a Brit I also imagined Filch kicking students across the swamp at first, it’s not out of character for him lol
TIL! I had no idea until this moment.
Yup. Just learned he was not football punting kids over a wet spot 😂
The whole prefects and head boy/girl thing I really thought it was a Hogwarts thing
Me too until I read this comment
Lmfao not long ago I read that it actually happened in the UK
Grammar school kid here, we had prefects. In fact, much more than the ones in Hogwarts, our school had a body of prefects and several head prefects, the leader of which was the head boy/girl. Then there were subject specific prefects, too, but they generally ranked under full prefects.
Upon receiving her perfect badge Hermione asked Harry to borrow Hedwig to send a letter to her parents because "prefect is something they understand"
I think I just assumed they could understand it was an honor or something, not that it was something they had at their schools
That’s what I thought
I’m Indian and we have it too! (Makes sense because india is a former British colony). We also have School Houses.
In Goblet of Fire, when Hermione's refusing to eat any more at the feast and Ron's trying to entice her with desserts, he exclaims, "Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!" For the longest time, I thought that was basically a very British way of saying, "Holy crap, look! Chocolate gateau!" I didn't find out until just a few years ago that spotted dick was actually a dessert and not British slang.
Lol, now I want to start using this as a swear. 😂 "Spotted dick! It's cold today!"
Imaging this as Adam West Batman/Robin dialogue "Spotted dick batman! The Joker has pulled off another boner!"
"Spotted dick, Batman! You're really giving those bad guys a pounding!"
I legit lol’d at this!
Wait, Irish here but absolutely stunned that people thought Christmas crackers were made up. I thought they were bog standard part of every Christmas
They have them in some specialty shops in the US! I’ve bought them from World Market, but they’re definitely marketed as a “British” item. I’ve seen other people have Christmas crackers around but they consume British media so it makes sense.
I grew up in America, but my dad is British, and I thought Christmas Crackers were a normal thing in America cause we always had them. My mum would complain that they were hard to find, but I assumed it was because they were popular and sold out quickly. I didn’t find out until high school that they weren’t popular in America.
Tiny explosives you use during a meal sounds like something that Americans would enjoy too
I just pop off a few rounds from my .45 after we're done saying grace.
American: "Someone told me British people sit around eating their Christmas dinner wearing little paper crowns 😂" Me: "haha, that's ridiculous, obviously we dont- ... Oh, wait no, the crackers... Yeah we do that"
You know, until I read your reply, I actually thought Christmas crackers were a food item and I couldn't figure out why people were so excited by saltines for Christmas. My family always called them poppers, so I was thoroughly confused.
Same! I'm Canadian and always had Christmas crackers
I’m Canadian and have definitely had them around during Christmas!
Yeah, they're perfectly normal here in Ontario.
Aussie here, they’re very much standard here, can’t believe it’s not everywhere!
Huh anyone else seeing the pattern emerging here???
Ha ha ha. Might check with some Indian friends of mine to see if they were common over there. For some reason I have a suspicion. It'd be mad craic altogether if they were!
NZ is also an ex colony and all of these things (XMAS crackers, school houses, prefects etc) are tradition here lol
so did i!! i guess ive just never spoken about them with a foreign person but wow
I think I only realized they weren’t just a magic thing when I saw them in Doctor Who!
I thought it was just something Jagex made up for Runescape...
This thread is an amazing read as a British person. I have no idea that things like Christmas crackers and treacle tart (or, from the sounds of it, even just treacle) weren’t widely known.
Me too! I had no idea the US didn’t have crackers! It’s such a normal tradition over here.
I had to look it up once I got to your comment. This entire thread I thought Christmas crackers were a food.
I thought the education system with OWLs and NEWTs was so well thought out. Now I’m in the UK teaching A levels and I use HP schooling as a reference point for Americans to explain what grade level I teach.
Same I thought it was really funny until I learned about UK exams. I guess for the US it would be closest to our ACTs and SATs. Which I guess the joke kind of works? Even though the testing process is not the same at all.
I didn't necessarily think they were magical, but the description of Bob Ogden's muggle clothes, to an American, is absolute and complete gibberish: "...a frock coat and spats over a striped one-piece bathing costume..." It's been like 15 years since my first read of book 6, I still have absolutely no idea what the hell Bob was wearing.
[A frock coat](https://www.baronboutique.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/mens-frock-coat-vintage-style.jpg) and [spats](https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-57sf5/products/365/images/2076/spats_b__40204.1452031295.1280.1280.jpg?c=2) over [a striped one-piece bathing costume](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/06/08/22/35111AE800000578-0-image-m-89_1465421487818.jpg)
Seems like Bob Ogden actually was quite spiffy!
Or just saw Robert Smith on the way to the beach and was like yup normal muggle clothes.
Doing the lord’s work
I only know what spats are thanks to Scrooge McDuck.
Most of what I know about high society is from Scrooge McDuck.
They’re all just old styles of clothing that are no longer worn – plenty of people would have worn them in the US too, just not for a very long time. The whole idea is that he’s wearing a muddle of outdated garments that shouldn’t go together cause he doesn’t know how muggles actually dress.
Apart from the one piece bathing costume, I have no idea what a frock coat and spats are either and I’m British
A frock coat is almost like a really long fancy suit jacket - spats are shoe covers that attach around the ankle and go over the top of the shoe.
I had the opposite experience once. as a kid, I thought that those heavy wooden trunks were just a normal thing that modern british people used for packing. I was very surprised to learn that they actually do use suitcases like the rest of us edit: apparently I was kinda right, and trunks are actually still fairly common for boarding schools. cool!
They used to be what people packed things into, before the more modern style of suitcase came into play. Like many things in the wizarding world, their stuff is often a little older in style/fashion.
Fwiw we were encouraged to bring trunks to the American all girls boarding schools I attended, mostly because they store a lot more stuff and act as like a bench at the end of your bed
It’s still a boarding school thing! Had a big trunk the whole time I was a boarder. It is… of course, a purely aesthetic thing though. Lol.
We still have the trunk that my mum took to uni in the 80's so they are used! Or they were at one time.
I had one in the US that I took to college in the 80s. It stored anything that stayed in the dorm basement storage room over the summers (books, bedding, typewriter because I’m that old), and in my first couple of apartments doubled as a coffee table.
I just assumed every single town name was made up. Godric's Hollow? You better believe I'm filling that up. Surrey? Surreal, bro. *Elephant and Castle?* Wizard shit.
There's a place in england called Studly Roger. It's in Ripon.
No it's not, no it's fucking not, I *refuse.*
Don't forget to stop by Giggleswick and Fattyhead if you get the chance.
Cockermouth If your feeling raunchy.
Or head to Wales for Three Cocks, and stop off at Llanfairpwylgwyngylgogerychrwyndrobllantysiliogogogoch (may or may not be spelled correctly)
Whereas I, being passingly familiar with how *absolutely fucking bonkers* UK place names can be, assumed they were all real. I'm still disappointed there isn't actually a town called Little Whingeing in Surrey.
There wasn't just a *little* whinging in Surrey while the Dursleys lived there.
Treacle tart, knickerbocker glory, and Yorkshire (or really any) pudding. Pudding when I was growing up was pre-fab chocolate in little plastic cups. Jumpers. Edit: when I was a kid and read the HP books, I assumed Yorkshire pudding was mint chocolate. I was thinking it was like York Peppermint Patty 🤓😂😅
For a split second I thought you were gunna say Yorkshire was fictional 😂
yorkshire pudding isnt desert!! its like a light fluffy bread that you typically have with a roast dinner :)
If you have left over yorkshires then they do great as a pudding, bit of golden syrup on them. But honestly who has left over yorkshires?
Or jam, or butter and sugar. Always have leftovers, as purposely cook extra.
Eggs, flour, milk, water and salt whisked to high heaven in a magic order and roasted in beef dripping or goose fat (if available). If it's not a family recipe at least 100 years old, they won't work as well :D. I have my great-great grandmother's recipe with the excellent footnote of 'mix until it looks like worms'. I'm very broke at the moment and have yorkshire puddings with vegetable stew most weeks. Incredible filling and very cheap.
Amazing! As from the UK I would never even clock that these were noteworthy
On a related note, are peppermint humbugs a real British thing? I assumed they were the sequel to chocolate frogs.
I thought the name Hermione was a Rowling invention until I applied for a UK MA program and one of the administrative staff had the name.
My friend was nearly named Hermione in 1993, but they went with a different name in the end. A good thing, too, as her dad’s name is Ronald.
My Mum was in a baby group with me and there was a baby Hermione, it was 1994. Sometimes I wonder how it went for her.
She's doing great, she's administrative staff on a UK MA program now
The actress that played the housemaid Ellen (not the cook) in Marry Poppins was Hermione Baddeley. That was the first and only time outside of Harry Potter that I'd seen the name.
It's an older name and I had certainly not heard it before HP, but now it's hilariously everywhere since the Harry Potter generation started breeding. I'm a teacher and every school I've worked at for the last few years there's been at least one Hermione per year group it seems.
“Since the Harry Potter generation started breeding.” 😂😂😂
It's funny but also true. I feel bad for all the young Aryas and Khaleesis/Danearys' out there cause their parents were making babies at the height of Game of Thrones popularity
Arya gets a pass in my book. It's an innocent sounding name enough. Khaleesi tho, that's not okay haha
Isn't Khaleesi more a title than a name? Like naming your daughter "Missus?"
More like naming your daughter "Her Majesty"
For me, it was kind of the opposite - I assumed that butterbeer was a British thing and not made up for the books.
It did used to be in Tudor times, Heston Blumenthal found a recipe for it and made it. The historical version was alcoholic and sickly sweet. I had a go at making it and it was alright, in very, very small quantities, but it apparently crops up in a lot of very old recipe books.
Apparently the original point of butter beer was to mask the taste of beer that was going stale, so you could still make a profit off of it.
not exactly magical, but I thought that Hagrid was literally baking rocks in the oven whenever they talked about his "rock cakes"
I always thought that he was just making really hard cakes. Are they a particular sort of cake?
Yup, rock cakes are a crumbly, buttery sort of affair with raisins or currants usually. They're rock shaped when cooked and about the size of a balled fist. My nan makes great ones.
Oh dang, I just thought "rock cakes" ment he burned the ever loving crap out of them lol
Me too! This is the first piece of information in this entire thread that's news to me
I still have no idea what a knickerbocker glory is
A massive ice cream sundae
Aww hell, I always thought it was just a steak or a burger and thought that Harry got a good meal for once lmao. edit: AHA, it's translated as a steak in the Finnish version and that's what I've read first, so this is obviously where my confusion comes from.
Knickerbocker glories are American originally.
I’m British but I have a few non-British friends who were surprised that people say “fancy” outside of Harry Potter. They didn’t necessarily think it was just HP but just a really old-fashioned term. Nope, I’m afraid “fancy” is a language mainstay among the youth. I believe I even told my current partner I “fancy” him. Also, as someone who went to a traditional British boarding school, people were shocked to find the following were real too: - Long dinner table benches (like the house benches in HP) - Trunks to carry your stuff - Having a hat for day wear - Common rooms
I spent a summer in Europe when I was in college. Befriended a British guy. One night he told me he fancied my friend. I giggled delightedly and told him to say it again. He was like, say what? I was like, "tell me again that you *fancy* my friend!" It was just *so* British to hear him say that, it made me happy. (Honestly I couldn't understand half of what he said. I knew we are both speaking English but somehow there was a language...or rather, an accent barrier. He was from Doncaster, if that helps you place the accent).
I’m English and feel they’d be an accent barrier between me and someone from Doncaster.
I read the British version of the fourth or fifth book when it came out and was so mystified why everyone kept saying “Wotcher!” to each other. Was it a wizarding word? Were they saying “Watch out!” or “Be careful!”? It was so mysterious! I was so disappointed when I later found out it basically just means “hello,” lol
>I read the British version of the fourth or fifth book when it came out and was so mystified why everyone kept saying “Wotcher!” to each other. Was it a wizarding word? Were they saying “Watch out!” or “Be careful!”? It was so mysterious! > >I was so disappointed when I later found out it basically just means “hello,” lol Semi-related - when I first moved to the UK, people kept saying, "You all right?" to me, and I kept wondering why everyone thought I was not all right/if I was unwittingly walking around with a troubled facial expression or something. Eventually, I clocked that that was just another way of asking "How are you?".
Yes, same! It’s a bit disconcerting at first.
merciful swim mindless practice scandalous many hat doll license sugar *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
British person here. Honestly, I’ve never actually heard a person say “wotcher” in my life. It’s definitely an old bit of slang nowadays.
Snogging. It’s such an odd word to me and I thought it had something to do with the snot in someone’s nose or the nose a pig makes. But nah it means kissing or making out.
It sounded suggestive enough that I always thought it was *more* than that...
Not HP, but I thought Turkish delight was a Narnian food for the longest time. Don't really see it here in California.
As a somewhat less fortunate child, and an avid reader. I was very disappointed when I tried a Turkish delight. I kept trying them for years expecting them to be good enough to be worth getting kidnapped for.
Same. As a kid, I was like, someone get Edmund some chocolate! Gonna blow his mind. However! Remembering the setting for *when* the story takes place--Edmund would have been living in the middle of rationing during the war. It didn't NEED to be an amazing magical confection. Just that it was sugar at all would have been an impossible and forbidden treat (never underestimate the lure of the forbidden). So now, as an adult better understanding the context of war and scarcity (and addiction), I'm back to understanding where he was coming from. Sugar sings very sweetly when you're on a diet that forbids it...
They were also magical sweets, probably enchanted to be addicting.
In OotP, I thought Filch was kicking the kids across Fred & George's swamp instead of using an actual boat.
This is my absolute favourite one. On brand but also hilarious hahaha
Despite being a Squib, one part of Filch is magical- his legs. He's really good at punting children a long distance.
Wait?? He wasn't??
I thought a treacle tart was a wizard dessert. Nope, just British.
Spotted dick made me laugh like a maniac as a kid
Only as a kid? When I was in high school, I visited a British tearoom with my mother and a friend. When it came time to order dessert, we all just sat there blushing and stammering until our server finally said "Ah, you want to try the spotted dick, don't you!" My mother will tell you that she placed the order while my friend and I giggled like schoolgirls, but nope, she was every bit as tongue-tied herself.
Boarding schools and trains lol. We only have one passenger train in México.
Trains????????????????
it's like a box, but made of metal, and it has wheels, and it's glued to the street.
THIS HAS ME DYING
Wait what?
"Sciving", as in "sciving snack boxes". I've read the books and watched the movies and listen to the audiobooks multiple times over but until very recently I didn't know sciving was a general term for getting out of school. I thought I had more to do with the act of getting sick. We call skiving "ditching" or "skipping" school.
Yeah, in the UK it's a more general term for getting out of doing hard work. In the books Skiving Snack Boxes are meant for "faking sick" (or the UK term "pulling a sickie") basically pretending you're ill to get out of work. But a skive can be many instances of avoiding hard graft. EG ; You work in a busy shop. You usually man the tills. 20 customers ask about \*New Product!\* Your manager doesn't know what this is. As An Employee you know \*New Product!\* won't be on the shelves till next week. No-one told the manager tho. You offer to investigate. You are off the tills and free to wander/roam around the shop. You go to Delivery. You stand out back checking your facebook, speaking to colleagues and generally wasting as much time as you think you can. You check Reddit for any interesting HP theories. Your friend that unloads the stock asks "What YOU doing back here??" You reply "Skivving!" 20 mins later you go back and tell your boss info you already knew. He feels like your misson was successful. No-one knows any different. You went for a skive.
Haven't seen anyone say the Money but the ridiculous weird numbers in money with no decimalisation was just the British norm until like 1972
We used pounds shillings and pence until 1971 but it had been around for almost 1,000 years at that point so the change was a big one. You'll hear people talk about hapeneys, crowns, bob and other names but those were just slang for coins, not units of currency (If you're from the US think dime or quarter). It seems very odd looking back from a decimalised perspective but it was based on weight and grew organically, it wasn't planned like the modern system was.
Do British people call dessert ‘pudding?’ Or do they just have pudding all the time
We call that course pudding.
Ok thank you, after the 15th mention of pudding after dinner I assumed it was a branch term, because no one loves actual pudding that much
If you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding
How can you have any pudding if you *don't eat your MEAT*!
Yeah we call dessert 'pudding' here. We still use the word 'dessert' but pudding is more widely used in the area where I'm from.
I had the opposite of this when I was younger and we visited some family in the States and they offered me a pudding cup as a snack and I was so confused when I got it! I didn’t know what I was expecting really, but to this day I still don’t know what it was I ate in that cup
Spellotape. I only learned when I was 22 that the popular British name brand tape is Sellotape and the wizard name was based off a real thing. In America we have Scotch Tape
Weirdly enough, if you walk into a shop in Scotland today it's mostly 3M Scotch brand tape and we call it Sellotape anyway. It's extra weird because the original naming for Scotch was a racist one, implying cheap... xD
Dragons. I always thought dragons weren’t real but ig u British people just have them flying around everywhere. Castles too
In the 7th book Xenophilius Lovegoods hair is described as being “candy-floss” like. I wasn’t 100% sure what that was, but because of floss I assumed that it would be pin straight and flaxen. Turns out candy floss is cotton candy :/
In Australia it’s called fairy floss
Wait, British people really do exist ?
Lol you little shit
Houses / Colleges at schools and Prefects.
The word “Wheezes”. When I first read HBP, I was very confused. Then, I learned that a wheeze is another way of saying a joke or a prank in England. Prefects and Head boys/girls. Thought it was a Hogwarts thing, but nope!
Literally never made this connection! Haha now I’m wheezing!
Wheezing is the noise you make when you can't quite breathe. Think of someone laughing really hard, to the point where they can't laugh and they just wheeze.
It’s a very outdated expression - it’s the sort of word you’d find in a children’s comic from the fifties or sixties, not in regular conversation.
Harry had to grow a whole new arm bone in the infirmary and still had a vault of galleons left afterwards.
That’s definitely something Americans cannot relate to lol. I also feel like growing new bones wouldn’t even be covered by insurance. They’d claim it was cosmetic or something like that lol
I thought Fang was a magical creature for the longest time, and then I just realized that a boarhound is a Great Dane. Haha
Indeed! I wonder why they didn’t cast a Great Dane for the films! (They used a Neapolitan Mastiff instead.)
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I didn't realize how bad I'd been butchering most of the pronunciations. Seamus I pronounced as Sea-uh-mus. Hermione as Her-me-own.. when the movies started to slowly come out I was so enlightened.
That is exactly why Rowling had that 'how to pronounce my name' conversation between Hermione and Viktor Krum. Because so many non-british fans had asked her how to pronounce Hermione's name.
Imagine having these arguments in the year 2000 when you’re 12 years old and your teacher is reading it out loud and you’re the only kid who has already read all 3 books and somehow knew the pronunciation. Listening to the books on tape helped I think for some readers.
I pronounced Sirius' name as Sigh-russ until one day I realized there was a second "i" and had a long debate on the bus as to why JKR would make someone's name "serious".
90% of the food. Treacle Tart, Pumpkin Pastie, etc.
This is slightly off-topic, but it's a funny story, so I'll tell it. I was 18 when I read Harry Potter for the first time. I knew it was a series about a magic school, but that was pretty much all I knew when I picked up *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone*. Obviously I loved it - aside from the first few chapters I read it in a single sitting - but as I got to the point where they started talking about the "sorcerer's stone," I found myself thinking, "Gee, that sounds kind of like the philosopher's stone." A bit later: "Okay, this sounds a *lot* like the philosopher's stone, I bet that was part of the inspiration for this story." Then: "It *is* the philosopher's stone! She's talking about the freaking philosopher's stone! WHY DOESN'T SHE JUST SAY PHILOSOPHER'S STONE?" That was how I learned that popular books are often modified for international audiences. I have since become quite adept at tracking down U.K. editions of U.K. books. (That said, I'm not *entirely* unsympathetic to whoever decided American readers of OotP would be better off with Fred and George trying to keep their spirits up during exams, rather than trying to keep their peckers up.)
OH MY GOD. *Please* keep your peckers up.
Question from the US: Are the Weasley sweaters essentially ugly Christmas sweaters? Are those a thing in the UK? My assumption is that Molly made them unironically.
Yes to all of those
It's only a few decades ago that jumpers/sweaters like that weren't ironic, and it was common for mums (especially in less wealthy families) to knit their kids jumpers (maybe it was the same in the US?). I think since the wizarding world is a bit old-fashioned that way, and Molly was doing that. The jumpers just had their initials on them, so they weren't meant to be ugly Christmas ones, but even in the 90s there was a kind of fondness over the uncoolness yet sweetness of those types of handmade jumpers. It's the type of thing your gran would do for you.
The school year starting in September. I thought that was a Hogwarts thing, but apparently it's a British thing. In Australia the school year runs from late January until early December. Edit: Summer is December, January and February here.
That’s not even a British thing, really just a northern hemisphere thing. Haha. Although it’s common in many countries, including Britain I believe, to start in august. In Germany where I went to school as a kid, we always started in august. But the start date varies from state to state and year to year because the government is trying to prevent too much traffic by people going on holidays at the same time. In Canada, where I live, we always started school in September though.
Also the Christmas crackers, plus peppermint humbugs. And like others said, I didn’t realize prefects weren’t just a Hogwarts thing. I also was t aware that school uniforms were such a common thing in England, in the states it’s really just religious private schools (as far as I know).
Everything to do with the school system, basically. Boarding school - when I read the Philospher's Stone for the first time, I was seriously baffled by the idea of parents sending their children away for the majority of the year. The different houses - apparently that's British. Dormitories - you have to sleep in the same room with random strangers?! The school uniforms (in my country, there are no school uniforms). The Head Boy/Girl and the Prefects. Detention and suspension, actual disciplinary methods that the internet tells me are real and not just a Hogwarts thing. School tuition - primary and secondary education is free in my country, so it took me until the 6th book to realize that when Harry was worried that uncle Vernon wouldn't pay for him to go to school, he didn't just mean books and stationary. Also, having lessons all day long and having to do your homework in the evening. Not sure if that's British - probably not? Oh, and the crazy early dinners. I'm not sure if it's true, but it always seemed to me that at Hogwarts, students ate around 5 or 6 o'clock. That's just insane to me, I'd be starving by 9pm.
Sadly having to do homework after a full day of school isn't just for Hogwarts, or even just for Britain.
What country are you from where there were no detentions or homework? And not having a full day at school either - our school day was 8:30am-4pm, then an hour or two homework a night at least. As a British person that seems so wild to me, I thought that was commonplace across the world haha. Boarding schools are pretty rare in the UK nowadays really, they're generally quite expensive so you have to be rich to afford them
Lessons all day long and homework in the evening is a thing. Paying for education is not - Harry is basically going to a 'private school' also known in the UK misleadingly as a public school. But education IS free in the UK if you go to a state school. We have both systems running in parallel.
I'm British and I never thought hogwarts was paid for. I assumed he was referring to supplies also 🤔
90% of the food
Until today (it was literally today) I thought that the Order of Merlin was totally, completely, 100% fictional, but I can only assume it’s based on the Order of Merit, which I have only learned about by watching The Crown on Netflix (I’m late to the party on that, but on the off chance anyone else is too, allow me to say that it’s excellent, 10/10, would recommend)
That a family of 9 used a Ford Anglia in the 90s
The phrase “Wotcher.” Thought it meant something along the lines of watch out or somebodys watching you every time Tonks would say it but it’s just another way to say hello.
Filtch punting children across a swamp. Here that means to drop kick
When I moved to England, I found out that schools have houses too. Low key excited when my daughter was placed in a house lol.
Pumpkin juice, hell that shite is nasty. Always expected it to be sweet