Might the fact that the students prize cherry wands come from the cultural significance of cherry blossoms in Japan? Cherry blossoms, if I recall correctly, have a ton of symbolism attached (mortality, beauty, clouds; connection to militarism in WWII...) 109.192.143.85 09:06, July 4, 2012 (UTC)
Book of Potions
Does Wonderbook reveal more information on the School?--Rodolphus (talk) 19:22, November 13, 2013 (UTC)
- Not that I know of, all I know is that there is a student from Mahoutokoro competing in the Wizarding Schools Potions Championship. -- Seth Cooper owl post! 19:47, November 13, 2013 (UTC)
Can you give a link with this information?--Rodolphus (talk) 20:00, November 13, 2013 (UTC)
Pronunciation guide
Is the pronunciation given, "Mah - hoot - o - koh - ro", Word of God, i.e. from Rowling herself? Because the more usual way to pronounce "Mahoutokoro" is more like "Ma-hoh-to-koro", long "o" sound on the second syllable (like a garden "hoe"), and short "o"s (like the "o" in "tic-tok") on all the others. Also, each syllable should start with a consonant and end with a vowel, unless it's just a vowel on its own; so no "hoot" or even "haute".
More than you probably wanted to know: 魔法, meaning "magic", is pronounced まほう, where each hiragana letter is usually transliterated as "mo-ho-u" in standard Romaji; Yale transliteration would have it as "ma-ho-o", but in either case the last two hiragana combine to make the long "o" sound. The last character, 所, is pronounced ところ, or "to-ko-ro" (in both Romaji and Yale), meaning "place". To make a "hoo" sound isn't possible in standard Japanese, but you could approximate with ふう, "fuu" or "fū".
I am only an egg in terms of speaking and reading Japanese, but the above is fairly solid; while there are regional variations I may not be aware of (my teacher taught Tokyo dialect), of course, I know I'm on solid ground regarding the consonant-vowel thing, and fairly confident about the most common pronunciation of 魔法. TheOriginalNelC (talk) 20:38, February 2, 2016 (UTC)
- I would think so. The pronunciation is taken from the Pottermore website, which says the info is from Rowling. Not to mention, she's pretty much redirecting people every once in a while to the Pottermore website for Harry Potter updates of any kind. EternalLocket (talk) 21:27, February 2, 2016 (UTC)
- I guess I should write to Rowling, then. ;) TheOriginalNelC (talk) 21:30, February 2, 2016 (UTC)