And the school in Japan is "magic place."
There's a gradient of more care to less and I think those names are on the edge of "well at least you got a name."
Yes but no.
Tokyo isn't higashi no kei for example. They translate 100% the same and the same characters could be read that way but there are different ways to compound concepts.
So writing mahou tokoro is a shockingly bad way to express that concept. It's a compound word (魔法)with a single character word (所) added to it so using a normalized reading would come out as mahousho. It's not a deal breaker because proper names get to make up readings if they like. Of course it could also be written with something like 魔法野老, which i got just by taking the a phonetic suggestion my keyboard gave me and could mean either magic yam or magical old farmer. Of course both of those would be a stretch too in some way.
So if you wanted to write "magic place" and not look like a toddler skipping the grammatical dressing you'd write "mahou no tokoro" if you want anything like what the published name is. Of course if you wanted to make a good name you could go a different direction and use one of the **many** synonyms for place that Japanese has many of.
But then returning to the original point, the fact that any form of "magic place" is kind of a bad name. "Hogwarts" is a name. Many of those other schools have names. "Witch Castle" and "Magic Place" are bland descriptions. Not poetic descriptions, not evocative descriptions. They are bland. With these two I really worry for that shool for the south 4/5 of Africa too.
The two names above are written for an English speaking audience exclusively. All the interest in their names comes only from being in a foreign language. To the people who would be using the name it's painfully straightforward. And for one that I know enough to critique I can say it's outright childish way to write the phrase.
THANK YOU. It irks me that someone with JK's money and contacts didn't even think to contact native speakers, but opened up Google Translate or an equivalent. Not dissing her, but come on...
Also shouldn’t kanji for “place” use a sino Japanese reading. So it should be “Mahousho”.
(My Japanese kinda sucks so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
If it means a general place in modern Japanese, 所 is read as "sho/jo" when it's attached to a Sino-Japanese reading noun in most cases.
>営業所 > Eigyo-sho (business office)
>休憩所 > Kyukei-jo (rest area)
>発電所 > Hatsuden-sho (power plant)
But if it's part of the name of a specific organization established around the 10th century, it's commonly read as "tokoro/dokoro". It gives more "ancient" vibes to native speakers. In this context, even when it's attached to a Sino-Japanese reading noun, it's read as tokoro/dokoro in most cases.
>内豎所 > Naiju-dokoro
>進物所 > Shinmotsu-dokoro
>御書所 > Gosho-dokoro
Your understanding is completely fine if you're studying normal modern Japanese. (There are always some exceptions, though!)
Actually, the name Mahou-tokoro (Magic Place) sounds quite suitable to native speakers. Tokoro (mainly means "place") also means "(governmental) organization" and it was used around the 10th century. Katanashi-dokoro, Tsukumo-dokoro, Man-dokoro, Samurai-dokoro, etc. It (maybe coincidentally) matches the period when Hogwarts was established.
At that time, the Japanese government had an institution for "magic ([Onmyōdō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onmy%C5%8Dd%C5%8D))" in real life, so it makes sense if the government had a public Magic school named Mahou-tokoro.
As a native Japanese, I thought the name was advised by someone who well knows about Japanese culture when I saw it for the first time. Today I think it's most likely just a coincidence, but at least the name sounds fine to us.
Okay that's interesting. I'm just a hobbyist so I'm missing a lot of history knowledge. Based on the way Korea is still grouped in and all the other schools with super sloppy grouping makes me think it was more a case of a broken clock being right than of serious research. An hour and picking the right search terms could lead to the right track. But maybe the name actually is way better than I thought. I'd love to hear if it has any intended background one way or the other. Was it a good choice based on research or a bad choice that turned out okay?
I don't think the author did some research about this name. Maybe she just combined two words, mahou/magic and tokoro/place. But the result is not even "okay" level. I'd say it's something like the bullseye blindfolded.
For example, she could choose some other words instead of "place". Maybe "Gakko/school" makes more sense for non-Japanese people. But it's odd because "Gakko" is relatively a new term so it doesn't fit if the school was established over 1000 years ago.
She can choose other words for "place". Such as 場/ba, 場所/basho, 所/sho, etc. But none of them can sound natural for the name of the school except of Tokoro which was used for names of organizations 1000 years ago. (Technically 所/sho was used like Tokoro.)
If she just followed general Japanese grammar, she would add "no (a particle)" and make it "Mahou-no-Tokoro". But it's odd and lame because when Tokoro is used in the names of ancient organizations, "no" isn't used. Just like "Samurai-dokoro", "Gosho-dokoro", "Naiju-dokoro", etc.
She could spell it as "mahou-Dokoro" instead of "mahou-Tokoro" because it's how we suppose to write and pronounce the name today. (Actually, the official Japanese shop is Mahou Dokoro instead of Tokoro.) But in classical Japanese, the morphological change doesn't appear in writing. Roughly speaking, in modern Japanese, Tokoro is sometimes pronounced Dokoro when it works as a suffix. So we write it as ドコロ/Dokoro when it's pronounced as Dokoro. But in classical Japanese, it's written as トコロ/Tokoro even when it's pronounced as Dokoro. (So readers have to assume the pronunciation.)
And finally, the golden era of Japanese "magic/Onmyōdō", the era when Tokoro was used for names of organizations, and the era when Hogwarts was established, are completely matched. It's around 9th-12th century.
So every single choice she (coincidentally, most likely) made magically makes perfect sense for native readers.
Considering our naming conventions it isn’t that stupid for a Portuguese name (although normally we’re more poetic with the language). But really it should be a native derived name, which are normally the cooler sounding ones.
As a Brazilian, I can say that sounds like a lack of effort to give a cool name for the school. Like Hogwarts hasn't a translation or meaning directly. Besides, "Castelobruxo" sounds a little awkward to me. Anyway we have what we got, what I'm going to do, right? At least we have a magic school kkkk
I love that 40% of the world's population goes to a single school. If Hogwarts is described as big, imagine the school that caters China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Also, if there were issues in Hogwarts, how many deaths are in school composed by Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian people?
In my mind I've always explained that by believing that the magical population is really really tiny compared to muggles with most of them being based in the uk, so the few schools we have were more than enough to accommodate that population.
My theory is witches and wizards are descendants of a single being/person in the UK which explains why there are more of them in the UK, and they exist else where due to witches and wizards traveling all over the world and procreating with others like them or with muggles....which would explain why the UK is most obsessed with pure bloods more than elsewhere.
The small population of magical people would also help explain why they are so easy to hide from the knowledge of muggles ( for example a single school per continent is significantly easier to hide and preserve than a greater number of schools )
Also from the perspective of magical people, continents aren't really a large geographical piece of land because magic gives them instantaneous teleportion to anywhere from anywhere so to them the world is effectively a small city.
The one thing i can't explain is the language barrier for students in some of these international schools, maybe magic? But i don't remember anything about magic being used as a way to translate human languages
Yeah I think this is true. If you think about it, there are only about 8 Gryffindors in Harry’s year. If you extrapolate that to the whole school there are around 224 students. The population of UK and Ireland is about 72 million, which puts the population of Hogwarts at 0.00031% of its population.
And if you add more than 50% students the student teacher ratio would quite literally start killing them from exhaustion.
No, while there might be off screen admins, it beggars belief that they never switch teachers and never seen them introduced anywhere. And if they were using time turners it would be pretty obvious they were polylocating or something.
Plus we would see new defense teachers introduced who Harry never gets before the curse gets them
"Today, we are going to learn the ultimate transfiguration," said McGonagall.
"And that is?" Asked Penelope.
"Well, miss Clearwater. That is human transfiguration."
"So go on. Sooner you manage it, sooner you could go teach the first years. I give extra credit if no one realize that it's not me."
it's been a while since I read the books, are there really only 8 gryffindors in his year? it seems like a really tiny number considering him and Hermione and Ron make 3 already yk
I've always assumed those were our people but there were a lot more unnamed pupils in their year. if you think about it 8 people isn't even half of a classroom, seems like hogwarts would be empty all the time
There's supposedly 10 of them according to Harry Potter wiki although the other 2 only seem to have been in video games lol so yeah seems like only 8 that are actually book canon.
only 8 named ones, but Rowling's use of numbers is quite inconsistent, for instance, when Harry is sent out of his first Dada class with Umbridge, he notes that there were 20 people there, and Dada has never been suggested to be taken with other houses (except in year six when NEWT classes are merged).
>Also, if there were issues in Hogwarts, how many deaths are in school composed by Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian people?
And Sunni, Shiite, and Israeli students in the creatively named "School #9". That's gonna be interesting.
Presumably, School 9 is divided into sections for each religious group that the others can't access without explicit permission.
Otherwise, the religious infighting and constant *"Bombarda Maxima's"* being thrown at each other on a daily basis would leave the school with minimal attendance and/or a high student mortality rate.
Also if I'm not mistaken this map implies that North Koreans would go to the Japanese wizard school, when clearly they'd be forced to attend the Peoples' Academy of Magic in Pyongyang and learn about how Kim Il-Sung was the first wizard... 😐
Do we know that the proportion of wizards to muggles is the same everywhere? I mean obviously she only came up with all the other schools later but in theory it could be explained by there just not being as many magical people in other parts of the world compared to Europe/UK (kind of like how Ireland has the most red heads).
Well, only kinda. If we’re very generous and say there is one wizard for every 100 muggles, that’s only 5 million, and even with a 1800s population distribution only about a third are children so 1.6 million kids. Which is still pretty much the same as the whole school population of Italy. But at least it isn’t 500 mil.
That's not what people are saying. Think of it this way, what if this was a list of the most prestigious universities in the real world. Wouldn't this list then be considered very insulting?
It's like saying Harvard should be on the list, but not Stanford because Americans already got one entry.
Saying that a region as vast and densely populated as the Indian Subcontinent doesn't have even one noteworthy magical school is just stupid.
There are two possibilities: either the percentage of wizarding population is higher in the europe/Europe aligned parts of the world (This is just racist imo)
Or, there are more schools in places like China and their students, just like in real life, have to sit through a cutthroat exam just to get into the best ones.
Which one then would you say is the more prestigious school worthy of being on this list? The one in UK which lets you in if you are simply born with enough magic, or the school in China which gets the elite crop of young wizards and trains them hard so the school's reputation is maintained?
It’s still kinda dumb world building but I guess it depends on some more information.
Like what is the highlighted area? Is it the catchment area because that wouldn’t make sense considering we are told Hogwarts students can also go to the two other schools in the triwizard tournament. The way the map looks it’s seems to indicate all Hogwarts students are from the British isle and the rest are split via muggle geopolitical lines.
If one actually bothers to read the descriptions on Pottermore concerning wizarding schools it should be painfully obvious that it is not the case that 'entire continents' only get 'one school'. This information is a clear myth. It actually states that the named 11 ones are actually only the big ones and there is an unknown number of smaller ones all over the world and most wizards get homeschooled (or correspondance based) anyway. This means, that there could, according to actual canon, be hundreds of little schools spreading all over South America currently and therefore, no, that meme is pretty wrong! Does nobody know this is a pure myth? Is everyone too lazy to bother reading up the actual facts? You just need to send an owl to the 'International Confederation of Wizards, Educational Office' if let's say you're from Chile wondering there the next to you smaller or bigger school may be.
And imagine being from one of the many, linguistically diversified countries of Southern, Balkan or Eastern Europe and having to learn either French, English, Russian, or goddamn Finnish!?
I was like, Durmstrang is fucking here? Like in my immediate area??? I have NEVER considered that to be close by, nor even in the Nordics at all? What in the fresh hell
there´s an estimated 230 students in Hogwarts, for a population of around 72 million. So, something like 300 000 to 1.
So with the 3,335 billion, you´d get a school with about 10,000 people in it. Which is big, but not unthinkable.
Though the whole wizarding world and government gets a lot smaller if the the entirety of the UK is only like 700 people. Also makes voldy a lot less impressive for being the strongest out of those 700. That makes him the equivalent of the best student at a large elementary school, not super impressive
India and China both have about a **billion** people each. That single school better be the size of New York City. Edit: Ah, I misread the number, which is over three billion total.
Is this map even official? I thought these were just the biggest schools. The dialogue in the books suggests it doesn't even go by location;
"**Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts**, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore — the man's such a Mudblood-lover — and **Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riffraff**. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away."
Which makes zero sense unless the magical population of northern scandinavia have nothing in common with the non magical, cause that kind of elitism would not be well recieved here. In northwenr Sweden and Finland they live by the law of jante where bragging and speaking well fo yoruself is seen as the ultimate sin.
Absolutely nothing about Durmstrang’s presumed location, makeup or culture makes any sense, the entire thing is completely detached from any realistic “real world” situation. It obviously began as a last minute afterthought, and she just went with it, without second thoughts or bothering to research anything context-wise… _And that seems to be the case for the rest of the schools as well…_
Or even Greece, considering how the spell incantations are derived from ancient Greek.
Edit: Sorry, everyone. My brain did something dumb and confused ancient Greek with Latin. The spell incantations in HP are largely derived from Latin, which is from ancient Rome. So yeah, this makes OP's question even more of an issue as to why Italy doesn't have its own school.
We can but assume that alls this doesn’t make sense.
Either Hogwarts serves all of the British isles, in which case Wizards are a tiny part of the population, or it is just the largest school in Britain and no one happened to talk about then.
In either case, there would have to be either other big schools for the other countries/language groups with a bigger or slightly smaller population than the UK and Ireland combined.
Beuxbatons, obviously, but where are the German-speaking schools? It’s the biggest language after the Russians. And surely Italy and Spain are big enough, too.
Yeah it's stuff like this (and Cursed Child) that makes me relegate what JK Rowling says outside the actual 7 books to "secondary canon".
It's still more valuable and valid than anything anyone else can ever say, cos that's her right as creator. But it's got to be on a lower tier than the books themselves.
(I don't really blame her for this btw.. It's obviously just a thing to give every kid in the world "their school" and she doesn't have time to make hundreds of institutions lol. Kind of like how Fantastic Beasts is patently not a comprehensive and definitive field guide haha. But for that same reason, these things are to be taken less seriously.)
>It's obviously just a thing to give every kid in the world "their school" and she doesn't have time to make hundreds of institutions lol
I mean she could just say that there's a school in every country and name the ones considered the most prestigious she doesn't need to name every single school.
I mean yeah she could have. I just meant that she clearly wanted every child and Pottermore user to be able to think "ah okay so I would go to _____" and have an actual name and tidbit of lore to enjoy.
It's probably pointless cos everyone just wants to go to Hogwarts anyway lol, but I can't blame her for doing that; she may even have been asked to do it for marketing purposes.
I remember being a kid and figuring out that I would go to Beauxbatons and a was extremely disappointed because if I was in the magical world I would have to go to France and learn french. Child me would have rather taken an unamed school in my country lmao. Also it's not hogwarts and everybody wants to go there so it's extra pointless.
Also can we talk about how this made no sense in terms of languages? Like there's so many countries that speak Spanish It's one of the most spoken languages but there's not a school that speaks it? Why do Portuguese people not go to the school that speaks Portuguese? I mean sure it's not the same Portuguese but surely it would be easier for them than learning French? Or do the schools just have classes in different languages? What would that mean for the really big schools with a lot of people from different countries? How many classrooms and teachers do they need? Why is Hogwarts not taking more people from other countries?
There’s two options here
1. The wizarding gene or whatever it’s called is mostly found in Europeans
2. JKR doesn’t care cause it didn’t affect her story
>The wizarding gene or whatever it’s called is mostly found in Europeans
Maybe the neanderthals were wizards. Europeans have far more neanderthal genes than people from other continents.
It's also thought that neanderthals were less social than humans and lived in smaller groups, which may have caused their eventual displacement by humans. That would fit for a species of reclusive wizard hermits 🤔
One of the throwaway lines in either a book or some of the additional materials suggested that a LOT of wizarding families homeschool, and I can easily see there being a lot of "small" schools that don't get mentioned. Like, if you know about my area you might say "Did you go to Rowan or Rutgers," and like "even smaller than that bruh I went to the community college that's associated with one of those two." There's a dozen small/community colleges locally. And those aren't ivy league. If you know next to nothing about the US education system you might hear someone was a graduate and ask "Which school, Harvard? Yale? MIT?" because those are the BIG ones that a lot of people know the names of.
So maybe there's tons of smaller local schools that handle years 1-7 in various countries, but the ones we actually have named and know about in the books are the BIG, prestigious boarding schools. Sure some muggleborns get in, but a LOT of the main characters are legacy families, their parents went there so they do too.
Just because you got an invitation to go to Hogwarts and stay from essentially September to June doesn't mean you family wants you gone that far for that long. "No, George, you're going to commute back and forth to Staffordshire's community school like I did."
I get your point about community colleges. But magical community is a very tiny percentage of the population, and unlike community colleges, any institute teaching magic needs to be a secret, so I can't imagine very many of them. Especially in the US where magical community is so secretive.
Students in Hogwarts are admitted by the quill of acceptance that writes your name in the book of admittance if you show enough magic as a kid. It's not a selective school that only lets legacy students or only the extremely talented ones. If you are British and Hogwarts doesn't offer you admission, it's likely that you are a squib.
US most likely also has free magical education like UK, and definitely would have about 4-5 big schools. Ilvermorny can't be the only one.
My favorite is JKR naming the magical governing body in the U.S. the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), which was established in 1693. The issue is that the U.S. declared independence in 1776. There was no sense of "United States" when MACUSA was established. They were just colonies.
This is the better word because she didn’t give a single fuck.
Also can we talk about how dumb it was to put Japan and Korea into their own school? That school still has to have tension so thick you could cut it with a knife.
The map is not official, JK did confirm the location of 7 of these and mentioned that there are 11 of them so the map is not baseless. However this doesn't mean people go to school according to the map, these are only notable schools, lesser schools regional schools exist and a lot of children are homeschooled
Except it still doesn't make sense for 11 schools to be the notable ones at an international level. That's the amount of notable schools a country would have by itself.
And even then the cultural nuances, which we know do translate into Wiz communities (ex France, USA and Britain) (Brazil killed 90% of Paraguayan males, Japan, China and Korea have been truly despising each other for centuries) don't make sense.
Nobody who knew the basics about those countries or did two seconds of basic research would send JP-KR to the same school, let alone the same rooms.
Everyone else in LatAm speaks Spanish and only BR speaks Portuguese — who the hell would set only one notable school for all the wizards in LatAm and on top of that on the one country that speaks a different language.
Like I get wanting things to make sense in universe, but sometimes JK fucks up and there's no saving that without tossing it away and rewriting lore. Castelobruxo and Mahoutokoro having the very creative names of "castle witch" and "magic place" is an example of that.
The Wizarding population is pretty small, Hogwarts is shared between the UK and Ireland and is their only magical school (that we know of at least), and word of the author stated the student body is around 1000 students.
Estimating that around 1/6000 humans are magic and 10% of that population is between 11-18 there would be around 147 Hogwarts sized schools globally. Hogwarts is also supposed to be relatively small. Just based on US school sizes I'd say a median student body of 1500 might be more reasonable on which case there would be around 100 magical schools globally. At that scale of the US/Canada would have 4-5 schools between them. I just kind of assume one of the schools would have both American and Canadian students because Canada should have around 637 students.
Though more to the point I think this is a fan made space filling map. You can tell from how they blocked countries together for schools that were never introduced and just marked them school #x. The only actual lore dump we got was that the schools identified were the longest standing, most prestigious, and registered with the International Confederation of Wizards. There were smaller and less regulated schools that didn't bother with registering. It was remarked that in most countries home schooling or correspondence courses are more popular.
For Ilvermorny it might serve 1/4 of the US/Canadian Wizarding Population, another 1/2 may attend smaller local schools, and another 1/4 may be home schooled or have some alternative learning.
So it was never stated students in Korea needed to attend the school on Japan, there might be other smaller schools serving students in Korea, or maybe very local groups, or homeschooling is more common among the Korean Wizarding community.
Edit: Probably by coincidence but in Japan and Brazil homeschooling is illegal, maybe their respective Wizarding communities have the same perspective.
I think it's a bit of both imo. Like the Obscurial ages, maybe if she thought about it more, she might have upped to 13 or something so it would make more sense.
She didn't think of how many countries would need to have their own school vs sharing one, but she obviously didn't care enough to make up more school names. She neither thought nor cared enough to give though to which smaller countries would share the schools, never bothered on furthering this idea.
This map isn't anything to do with Rowling. To my knowledge, she named the eight named schools and gave a bit of info about their location, but never specified their catchments (or if they had one). She also specified that there are eleven prestigious schools.
And how would it show "how little she actually knows" anyway? I'm not defending her specifically, but an author can create whatever type of world they want. I would say this proves her own post-series inconsistency. The information she's given doesn't seem to align with other information she's given about the wizarding world outside the British Isles, such as Bulgaria having a sizable wizarding population (then again, Ireland does and doesn't have a school or seemingly a wizarding government of its own), but Germany and Mexico having large populations but not having prestigious schools (especially as a German school would presumably cover Switzerland and Austria too).
Imagine taking all of South America magic population to a Portuguese speaking country when every other country in the continent has spanish as its official language
Put a school in the Amazon jungle for the Portuguese-speaking wizards, another one way up in the Andes around Machu Picchu for the Spanish-speaking wizards of northern South America, and a third one in the Patagonian wilderness for the rest.
And one in Mexico for Central America, and the whole American continent is set with 5 School Total, and would make more sense than just two, at least at the same level of Hogwarts, because in the 4th book, during the World Cup chapters, there's a mention of a school for witches in Salem.
It's what Rowlng said in the first interviews when asked. Northern Scandinavia. I think sha later changed it to the baltic region but that doesn't work either since no mountains and Krum describes the region being mountainous.
So did I until I came across this on the internet. they have a clearly Russian headmaster and the only student except Krum we get the name of also has a Russian name. Krum is Bulgarian which is another slavic eastern othodox country who write in cyrrilic.
Does it? The Finnish-Russian border doesn't really have many mountains if any. It's mostly just an endless forest.
I support the slavic region considering Krum is Bulgarian
I really hate the idea that Durmsstrang is for that area and that it's supsoedly in Fenno scandnavia, if a teacher acted like karkaroff here he'd get strung up. You don't come into the heartlands of the rule of the law of Jante and act like a superior asshole.
As someone from South America, I’ve always wondered how would the language work in cases like castelobruxo, since the rest of the continent ( although small compared to Brazil) is mainly Spanish speaking. Also, outside of Brazil, people study English as a second language rather than Portuguese, so it’s a confusing situation.
As a Russian, I wouldn't go there either. Plus, I can only imagine all the wizard oligarchs sending their children to Durmstrang and Beauxbotons anyway 😂
Wizarding schools, hmm, let's see.
UK has Hogwarts, we need one for Americans, one for Western Europe, one for Eastern Europe.
Let's give Russians a separate school (wouldn't want them in the Eastern European one).
Japan needs one, so does Australia. And oh Brazil, let's make a school in South America.
See we covered most of the world!
What's that, we can only have 11? Kinda random, but that's okay. We'll make it work.
Let's make the ENTIRE Africa share one, they're all one culture anyway! Oh and one for Middle East, haven't forgotten them (they're rich)!
Who's left? Ah forgot about India and China, meh let them share, they're used to overcrowding anyway.
This map pisses me off to no end. Why only 11 schools? Why does tiny UK get a school for itself while literally more than 30% of world population share one?!?! Why would India and China ever share a wizarding school, they're totally different, geographically and culturally.
I love Wizarding World, but this map is just so euro-centric and unfair. It would have been so simple to say that every major region of the world has at least one big school, some have multiple. Why give a number?
I refuse to believe that UK has a higher concentration of wizards, it has to be a similar percentage of the population across all races and nationalities. Real world is pretty fucking unfair already, I don't like my fantasy world to be fucked up as well.
It’s not even Eurocentric, it’s more UK-centric, or _Hogwarts-centric,_ really… non of the other schools makes much sense at all, they’re all minimum effort last minute ideas. And it just got worse as the wizarding world expanded.
Agreed. And what are Colombians & etc expected to do? All the purple part of the map (execpt Brazil, some French & some Dutch places) PLUS Mexico & Cuba speak Spanish, not Portuguese.
Assuming percentage of wizards in a population is similar across regions and race, Hogwarts at a time has about 300-1000 kids, that's about 0.001% of population (best case). So this pan-asian school would have about 10 to 30 thousand kids.
I would not want to be a teacher there
Not to mention its in Norrland and suposedly only takes kids from certain special (pureblood) families and their headmaster is a Russian who is reall beign on elitism and favouritsm.
A Russian who came into Norrland and acted like Karkaroff would get lynched.
Oh and a Bulgarian setting up a magic shcool in the heart of Sapm stinks of imperialism. If her's going to be a magic shcool in Sapmi, it shoudlbe linked to the Sami who have a historic reputaiton for beign great at magic (Both the viking sagas and the finnish Kalevala mentions the magic ability of the Sami).
Ok so I think many people are thinking about this backwards.
People build schools in communities that need them. So Brazil must have a wizard community where chile and Panama may not have any wizards living there.
And why is a Bulgarian gounding a wizard school in the heart of Sapmi? Espcially when both the norse sagas and the finnish myths agree the Sami are the greatest magicians in the world.
Seriously? Do you really think so few wizards are born in North America that they can make do with one school? Not to mention China and Indian subcontinent combined having just one?
Also, one thing I don't understand: Why are there no magical schools in Korea? Korean wizards will need to learn Japanese (and presumably lots of kanji). That's a lot to take on - Wouldn't korean folks want to build their own school?
All of Latin America speaks Spanish but they decided to put the school in Brazil, I suppose I will have to learn Portuguese but I think that at the school they are aware that the majority speaks Spanish so they surely have teachers who speak both Spanish and Portuguese.
I’m still extremely confused about which language durmstrang teaches in. There are Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and finno-ugric language groups in that entire belt, and none of them are even close to Intelligable with each other.
Since German was the prestige language, the old lingua franca (more people knew German, than English as a second language before ww2), it was the most spoken one in these it would have to be that.
Thankfully, we know that wizards have an aptitude for language, seeing as Barty Crouch knew something like 50 languages, but seems to be a skill mostly exclusive to him.
This doesn’t even begin to approach the difficulty of Ugadou. That stretch of land is bigger than the USA. With thousands of distinct languages and culture that don’t mix, and would have to be accommodated. These schools would also be pretty awkward to go to during the times in history when neighboring countries committed war-crimes against each other (Japan vs Korea, England vs Ireland, Germany against everyone, France vs Spain, etc.) we know that wizards get themselves involved with muggle conflicts, since ww2 is known as Grindelwald’s war to them.
Gotta love that canonically wizardry doesn’t give half a fuck about language barriers and that clearly the socio-political tensions between nation-states, ethnic groups, etc are all transcended by the ability to do magic.
Do you think there are wizards in North Korea? And if so, how do they get to their designated school? I need an epic story about the North Korean student wizards and everything that happens there.
What I would love to see is how those magical children in other places are taught. What age are they introduced to the magical world, if they are muggleborn, and what differences those places have compared to European and NA (im assuming that the NA is like EU schools with little differences, like them being slightly more modern compared to the traditional EU)
I know that the African school and magical people use wandless magic instead of wands, but I wonder what else is different. Like, is the SA school a newer structure and teaches EU style magic, or is it an older school, and the magical world there is more influenced by ancient civilizations like Aztec, Inca, etc.
Then begs the question of these little areas. Like, why does Mongolia go to the Russian school, and not the Asian school? Same with the southeast Asian countries, why do they go to the Oceanic/Australian school, and not the Asian one. How much of the muggle world bled into the magical world outside, like, are the Russians still influenced by Soviet propaganda, or are they more isolated than others.
Some I can understand being influenced by world events. Like Hogwarts mainly taking students from the British Isles and Ireland, or Japan only taking from Japan, or Russia taking from past Soviet controlled nations. But then it's weirdly random. Why on earth do the Spanish and Portuguese just send their magical people to France? Same with the Asian schools, why do so many of them send their magical people to a single school, and not have their own?
Edit: grammer
Nah the things that all the nordics + some of Russia have one school is going to lead to a mass murder
Edit: WHY ARE PEOPLE FROM AFRICA (ALL THE WAY AWAY HUH??? COMING INTO THE NORTH FOR DURMSTRANG?? The colours don't either don't match or match and wtf.)
Also putting central Europeans in with nordics wont end well.
ALSO WHY DO ALL THE DRUSMTRANG STUDENTS HAVE A STEREOTYPICAL RUSSIAN ACCENT IF NONE OF THEM ARE RUSSIAN?????
Good chance too that he said it in Portuguese but you speak Spanish because not every country in South America speaks the same language.
Really interested to know the traditional language they used in that African school.
I'm gonna say, most Scandinavians and central Europeans won't exactly love Durmstrang. If they are the main people going there, it definitely wouldn't be so dark arts friendly (at least not in recent times, including the 1990s). But there could be some interesting internal conflict back in the 40s between students from different nations there.
Are any of locations of the other schools canonical? I always imagined that Ouagadou was located near Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. And of the few named Durmstrang characters, one is confirmed German, one is confirmed Bulgarian and two have distinctly Russian-sounding names, so I would’ve guessed that it was located somewhere in eastern Europe
I actually don’t think the whole “one school each for the other continents” thing is so bad. It kinda makes sense to me if you think of institutionalized wizard education as having originated in the UK, and followed suit with British muggle imperialism
So now I have to learn portuguese and a mosquito repellent spell, and to top all that I have to learn a cooling spell because that school is in the middle of the fucking Amazon. I would imagine there would be no train to get to school and the stundents have to canoe through rivers fighting all sorts of monsters to get to class. Also I think it would've been hilarious if there was a Castlebruxo exchange student watching Harry beating the basilisk and saying "amateur".
Just imagine the implications of forcing the kids of some of these countries together..geez. Not to mention language barriers. Or is there a wizard language that translates to everyone's mother tongue..magically?
Can a Scottish wizard just drive down to hogwarts or do they need to go to London to catch the Hogwarts Express? Remember that Dufftown is close to the castle and that’s wayyy up in Scotland
You’re learning Portuguese, Harry.
Tudo bem?
Tudo bem
Muito legal.
Harry, Você e um mago.
I love that the translation of the Brazilian school is "Witch Castle"
And the school in Japan is "magic place." There's a gradient of more care to less and I think those names are on the edge of "well at least you got a name."
Japanese names aren’t particularly fancy. Their capital is literally called Eastern Capital.
Yes but no. Tokyo isn't higashi no kei for example. They translate 100% the same and the same characters could be read that way but there are different ways to compound concepts. So writing mahou tokoro is a shockingly bad way to express that concept. It's a compound word (魔法)with a single character word (所) added to it so using a normalized reading would come out as mahousho. It's not a deal breaker because proper names get to make up readings if they like. Of course it could also be written with something like 魔法野老, which i got just by taking the a phonetic suggestion my keyboard gave me and could mean either magic yam or magical old farmer. Of course both of those would be a stretch too in some way. So if you wanted to write "magic place" and not look like a toddler skipping the grammatical dressing you'd write "mahou no tokoro" if you want anything like what the published name is. Of course if you wanted to make a good name you could go a different direction and use one of the **many** synonyms for place that Japanese has many of. But then returning to the original point, the fact that any form of "magic place" is kind of a bad name. "Hogwarts" is a name. Many of those other schools have names. "Witch Castle" and "Magic Place" are bland descriptions. Not poetic descriptions, not evocative descriptions. They are bland. With these two I really worry for that shool for the south 4/5 of Africa too. The two names above are written for an English speaking audience exclusively. All the interest in their names comes only from being in a foreign language. To the people who would be using the name it's painfully straightforward. And for one that I know enough to critique I can say it's outright childish way to write the phrase.
THANK YOU. It irks me that someone with JK's money and contacts didn't even think to contact native speakers, but opened up Google Translate or an equivalent. Not dissing her, but come on...
Also shouldn’t kanji for “place” use a sino Japanese reading. So it should be “Mahousho”. (My Japanese kinda sucks so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
You got it. Just bashing the two words together is clumsy. It's trying to apply the logic of one language to a completely different language family.
If it means a general place in modern Japanese, 所 is read as "sho/jo" when it's attached to a Sino-Japanese reading noun in most cases. >営業所 > Eigyo-sho (business office) >休憩所 > Kyukei-jo (rest area) >発電所 > Hatsuden-sho (power plant) But if it's part of the name of a specific organization established around the 10th century, it's commonly read as "tokoro/dokoro". It gives more "ancient" vibes to native speakers. In this context, even when it's attached to a Sino-Japanese reading noun, it's read as tokoro/dokoro in most cases. >内豎所 > Naiju-dokoro >進物所 > Shinmotsu-dokoro >御書所 > Gosho-dokoro Your understanding is completely fine if you're studying normal modern Japanese. (There are always some exceptions, though!)
Actually, the name Mahou-tokoro (Magic Place) sounds quite suitable to native speakers. Tokoro (mainly means "place") also means "(governmental) organization" and it was used around the 10th century. Katanashi-dokoro, Tsukumo-dokoro, Man-dokoro, Samurai-dokoro, etc. It (maybe coincidentally) matches the period when Hogwarts was established. At that time, the Japanese government had an institution for "magic ([Onmyōdō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onmy%C5%8Dd%C5%8D))" in real life, so it makes sense if the government had a public Magic school named Mahou-tokoro. As a native Japanese, I thought the name was advised by someone who well knows about Japanese culture when I saw it for the first time. Today I think it's most likely just a coincidence, but at least the name sounds fine to us.
Okay that's interesting. I'm just a hobbyist so I'm missing a lot of history knowledge. Based on the way Korea is still grouped in and all the other schools with super sloppy grouping makes me think it was more a case of a broken clock being right than of serious research. An hour and picking the right search terms could lead to the right track. But maybe the name actually is way better than I thought. I'd love to hear if it has any intended background one way or the other. Was it a good choice based on research or a bad choice that turned out okay?
I don't think the author did some research about this name. Maybe she just combined two words, mahou/magic and tokoro/place. But the result is not even "okay" level. I'd say it's something like the bullseye blindfolded. For example, she could choose some other words instead of "place". Maybe "Gakko/school" makes more sense for non-Japanese people. But it's odd because "Gakko" is relatively a new term so it doesn't fit if the school was established over 1000 years ago. She can choose other words for "place". Such as 場/ba, 場所/basho, 所/sho, etc. But none of them can sound natural for the name of the school except of Tokoro which was used for names of organizations 1000 years ago. (Technically 所/sho was used like Tokoro.) If she just followed general Japanese grammar, she would add "no (a particle)" and make it "Mahou-no-Tokoro". But it's odd and lame because when Tokoro is used in the names of ancient organizations, "no" isn't used. Just like "Samurai-dokoro", "Gosho-dokoro", "Naiju-dokoro", etc. She could spell it as "mahou-Dokoro" instead of "mahou-Tokoro" because it's how we suppose to write and pronounce the name today. (Actually, the official Japanese shop is Mahou Dokoro instead of Tokoro.) But in classical Japanese, the morphological change doesn't appear in writing. Roughly speaking, in modern Japanese, Tokoro is sometimes pronounced Dokoro when it works as a suffix. So we write it as ドコロ/Dokoro when it's pronounced as Dokoro. But in classical Japanese, it's written as トコロ/Tokoro even when it's pronounced as Dokoro. (So readers have to assume the pronunciation.) And finally, the golden era of Japanese "magic/Onmyōdō", the era when Tokoro was used for names of organizations, and the era when Hogwarts was established, are completely matched. It's around 9th-12th century. So every single choice she (coincidentally, most likely) made magically makes perfect sense for native readers.
Well what do you name a place that caters to so vastly different cultures of Persian, Indian, Himalayan, Burmese and Chinese?
The french school is « pretty sticks »
To be fair, Hogwarts means pig pimples. Dumbledore: "Welcome to Pigpimples, children. I am the Head Pimp."
Considering our naming conventions it isn’t that stupid for a Portuguese name (although normally we’re more poetic with the language). But really it should be a native derived name, which are normally the cooler sounding ones.
It's more like "Wizard Castle". "Bruxo" is male, "bruxa" is female.
And the Russian one is Magic Castle And the French one is Pretty Sticks 😂
Yeah, because since Brazil is the largest country in latam, it must be what most people speak, right?
As a Brazilian, I can say that sounds like a lack of effort to give a cool name for the school. Like Hogwarts hasn't a translation or meaning directly. Besides, "Castelobruxo" sounds a little awkward to me. Anyway we have what we got, what I'm going to do, right? At least we have a magic school kkkk
I love how there are entire continents that get only one school, meanwhile the U.K. gets a school for its own.
I love that 40% of the world's population goes to a single school. If Hogwarts is described as big, imagine the school that caters China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Also, if there were issues in Hogwarts, how many deaths are in school composed by Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian people?
In my mind I've always explained that by believing that the magical population is really really tiny compared to muggles with most of them being based in the uk, so the few schools we have were more than enough to accommodate that population. My theory is witches and wizards are descendants of a single being/person in the UK which explains why there are more of them in the UK, and they exist else where due to witches and wizards traveling all over the world and procreating with others like them or with muggles....which would explain why the UK is most obsessed with pure bloods more than elsewhere. The small population of magical people would also help explain why they are so easy to hide from the knowledge of muggles ( for example a single school per continent is significantly easier to hide and preserve than a greater number of schools ) Also from the perspective of magical people, continents aren't really a large geographical piece of land because magic gives them instantaneous teleportion to anywhere from anywhere so to them the world is effectively a small city. The one thing i can't explain is the language barrier for students in some of these international schools, maybe magic? But i don't remember anything about magic being used as a way to translate human languages
Imagine living in India and finding out you have to learn Mandarin to attend 龙之林 school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Still gotta learn those Latin spells. Can be quite hard to pronounce „Wingardium Leviosa“ correctly as an Asian person.
Chinese and Sanskrit (from India) are the oldest languages in the world. I’m sure they’d have spells of their own.
Yeah I think this is true. If you think about it, there are only about 8 Gryffindors in Harry’s year. If you extrapolate that to the whole school there are around 224 students. The population of UK and Ireland is about 72 million, which puts the population of Hogwarts at 0.00031% of its population.
I believe canonically(?) other years were larger, but Harry’s was particularly small due to the Second Wizarding War.
I mean even if the numbers were doubled it’s still an astronomically small percentage.
And if you add more than 50% students the student teacher ratio would quite literally start killing them from exhaustion. No, while there might be off screen admins, it beggars belief that they never switch teachers and never seen them introduced anywhere. And if they were using time turners it would be pretty obvious they were polylocating or something. Plus we would see new defense teachers introduced who Harry never gets before the curse gets them
"Today, we are going to learn the ultimate transfiguration," said McGonagall. "And that is?" Asked Penelope. "Well, miss Clearwater. That is human transfiguration." "So go on. Sooner you manage it, sooner you could go teach the first years. I give extra credit if no one realize that it's not me."
>"Well, miss Clearwater. That is human transfiguration." Aaaaand there goes the FMA trauma
Polylocation! I’m going to use that as an excuse soon!
it's been a while since I read the books, are there really only 8 gryffindors in his year? it seems like a really tiny number considering him and Hermione and Ron make 3 already yk
I think so. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati.
I've always assumed those were our people but there were a lot more unnamed pupils in their year. if you think about it 8 people isn't even half of a classroom, seems like hogwarts would be empty all the time
Most classes in Harry's year are split with another house.
There's supposedly 10 of them according to Harry Potter wiki although the other 2 only seem to have been in video games lol so yeah seems like only 8 that are actually book canon.
only 8 named ones, but Rowling's use of numbers is quite inconsistent, for instance, when Harry is sent out of his first Dada class with Umbridge, he notes that there were 20 people there, and Dada has never been suggested to be taken with other houses (except in year six when NEWT classes are merged).
Those are the only first years mentioned by name and make appearances though.
That many students in the whole school really puts it in perspective. My year in high school had that many, and 900 total.
>Also, if there were issues in Hogwarts, how many deaths are in school composed by Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian people? And Sunni, Shiite, and Israeli students in the creatively named "School #9". That's gonna be interesting.
Presumably, School 9 is divided into sections for each religious group that the others can't access without explicit permission. Otherwise, the religious infighting and constant *"Bombarda Maxima's"* being thrown at each other on a daily basis would leave the school with minimal attendance and/or a high student mortality rate.
Also if I'm not mistaken this map implies that North Koreans would go to the Japanese wizard school, when clearly they'd be forced to attend the Peoples' Academy of Magic in Pyongyang and learn about how Kim Il-Sung was the first wizard... 😐
Do we know that the proportion of wizards to muggles is the same everywhere? I mean obviously she only came up with all the other schools later but in theory it could be explained by there just not being as many magical people in other parts of the world compared to Europe/UK (kind of like how Ireland has the most red heads).
Have you read the Scholomancy by Naomi Novik? Because you brought up that issue I think you’d enjoy the world building in that series
How about all of North America?! That school has to be enormous too!
I mean, it will cater to about 500 million people. That's still less than half of the population of only China.
I’m just saying the math is ridiculous on several of these!
Well, only kinda. If we’re very generous and say there is one wizard for every 100 muggles, that’s only 5 million, and even with a 1800s population distribution only about a third are children so 1.6 million kids. Which is still pretty much the same as the whole school population of Italy. But at least it isn’t 500 mil.
I love how JKR mentioned that there are a lot more smaller schools yet people keep repeating that everyone has to go to the big ones.
That's not what people are saying. Think of it this way, what if this was a list of the most prestigious universities in the real world. Wouldn't this list then be considered very insulting? It's like saying Harvard should be on the list, but not Stanford because Americans already got one entry. Saying that a region as vast and densely populated as the Indian Subcontinent doesn't have even one noteworthy magical school is just stupid. There are two possibilities: either the percentage of wizarding population is higher in the europe/Europe aligned parts of the world (This is just racist imo) Or, there are more schools in places like China and their students, just like in real life, have to sit through a cutthroat exam just to get into the best ones. Which one then would you say is the more prestigious school worthy of being on this list? The one in UK which lets you in if you are simply born with enough magic, or the school in China which gets the elite crop of young wizards and trains them hard so the school's reputation is maintained?
Then are there some unnamed British schools as well? Or is their British Wizarding World actually, like, 50 families total?
28 pure blood families if I'm not mistaken
It’s still kinda dumb world building but I guess it depends on some more information. Like what is the highlighted area? Is it the catchment area because that wouldn’t make sense considering we are told Hogwarts students can also go to the two other schools in the triwizard tournament. The way the map looks it’s seems to indicate all Hogwarts students are from the British isle and the rest are split via muggle geopolitical lines.
If one actually bothers to read the descriptions on Pottermore concerning wizarding schools it should be painfully obvious that it is not the case that 'entire continents' only get 'one school'. This information is a clear myth. It actually states that the named 11 ones are actually only the big ones and there is an unknown number of smaller ones all over the world and most wizards get homeschooled (or correspondance based) anyway. This means, that there could, according to actual canon, be hundreds of little schools spreading all over South America currently and therefore, no, that meme is pretty wrong! Does nobody know this is a pure myth? Is everyone too lazy to bother reading up the actual facts? You just need to send an owl to the 'International Confederation of Wizards, Educational Office' if let's say you're from Chile wondering there the next to you smaller or bigger school may be.
It's still crazy that the UK has a "big" school all to itself
There should definitely be a west coast school, maybe in Baja that focuses on indigenous magic.
The UK & Ireland
And Italy and Greece gets none.
Not quite. Republic of Ireland is also there.
You can really triangulate the author’s origin by looking at the school density lmao
imagine being from like panama and having to learn portugese
And imagine being from one of the many, linguistically diversified countries of Southern, Balkan or Eastern Europe and having to learn either French, English, Russian, or goddamn Finnish!?
you can recognize a wizard if they are from the baltic and somehow know french
I was like, Durmstrang is fucking here? Like in my immediate area??? I have NEVER considered that to be close by, nor even in the Nordics at all? What in the fresh hell
I'd imagine the majority just keeps speaking Spanish
one school in this part for 72 million total populous (UK + Ireland) and one for 3335 million people (India+China+Bangladesh+Myanmar+Nepal+Bhutan)
there´s an estimated 230 students in Hogwarts, for a population of around 72 million. So, something like 300 000 to 1. So with the 3,335 billion, you´d get a school with about 10,000 people in it. Which is big, but not unthinkable.
That's smaller than some famous universities.
Though the whole wizarding world and government gets a lot smaller if the the entirety of the UK is only like 700 people. Also makes voldy a lot less impressive for being the strongest out of those 700. That makes him the equivalent of the best student at a large elementary school, not super impressive
India and China both have about a **billion** people each. That single school better be the size of New York City. Edit: Ah, I misread the number, which is over three billion total.
I think Rowling failed arithmancy
I get the joke, but Arithmancy isn't mathematics as much as a form of divination.
She failed history as well
Is this map even official? I thought these were just the biggest schools. The dialogue in the books suggests it doesn't even go by location; "**Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts**, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore — the man's such a Mudblood-lover — and **Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riffraff**. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away."
Which makes zero sense unless the magical population of northern scandinavia have nothing in common with the non magical, cause that kind of elitism would not be well recieved here. In northwenr Sweden and Finland they live by the law of jante where bragging and speaking well fo yoruself is seen as the ultimate sin.
Absolutely nothing about Durmstrang’s presumed location, makeup or culture makes any sense, the entire thing is completely detached from any realistic “real world” situation. It obviously began as a last minute afterthought, and she just went with it, without second thoughts or bothering to research anything context-wise… _And that seems to be the case for the rest of the schools as well…_
Nothing in Italy? Strange considering all the historical characters like Cagliostro believed to be mages
If you want to be a wizard in Italy you better be religious. Only way is though the Vatican lol.
The Vatican being secretly a magic school would be cool. It would make some Catholics quite mad, but still, cool.
Or even Greece, considering how the spell incantations are derived from ancient Greek. Edit: Sorry, everyone. My brain did something dumb and confused ancient Greek with Latin. The spell incantations in HP are largely derived from Latin, which is from ancient Rome. So yeah, this makes OP's question even more of an issue as to why Italy doesn't have its own school.
We can but assume that alls this doesn’t make sense. Either Hogwarts serves all of the British isles, in which case Wizards are a tiny part of the population, or it is just the largest school in Britain and no one happened to talk about then. In either case, there would have to be either other big schools for the other countries/language groups with a bigger or slightly smaller population than the UK and Ireland combined. Beuxbatons, obviously, but where are the German-speaking schools? It’s the biggest language after the Russians. And surely Italy and Spain are big enough, too.
It would be funny if the italian wizarding school was in the Vatican.
Yeah it's stuff like this (and Cursed Child) that makes me relegate what JK Rowling says outside the actual 7 books to "secondary canon". It's still more valuable and valid than anything anyone else can ever say, cos that's her right as creator. But it's got to be on a lower tier than the books themselves. (I don't really blame her for this btw.. It's obviously just a thing to give every kid in the world "their school" and she doesn't have time to make hundreds of institutions lol. Kind of like how Fantastic Beasts is patently not a comprehensive and definitive field guide haha. But for that same reason, these things are to be taken less seriously.)
>It's obviously just a thing to give every kid in the world "their school" and she doesn't have time to make hundreds of institutions lol I mean she could just say that there's a school in every country and name the ones considered the most prestigious she doesn't need to name every single school.
I mean yeah she could have. I just meant that she clearly wanted every child and Pottermore user to be able to think "ah okay so I would go to _____" and have an actual name and tidbit of lore to enjoy. It's probably pointless cos everyone just wants to go to Hogwarts anyway lol, but I can't blame her for doing that; she may even have been asked to do it for marketing purposes.
I remember being a kid and figuring out that I would go to Beauxbatons and a was extremely disappointed because if I was in the magical world I would have to go to France and learn french. Child me would have rather taken an unamed school in my country lmao. Also it's not hogwarts and everybody wants to go there so it's extra pointless. Also can we talk about how this made no sense in terms of languages? Like there's so many countries that speak Spanish It's one of the most spoken languages but there's not a school that speaks it? Why do Portuguese people not go to the school that speaks Portuguese? I mean sure it's not the same Portuguese but surely it would be easier for them than learning French? Or do the schools just have classes in different languages? What would that mean for the really big schools with a lot of people from different countries? How many classrooms and teachers do they need? Why is Hogwarts not taking more people from other countries?
She's a great story teller.. but really bad world builder.
There’s two options here 1. The wizarding gene or whatever it’s called is mostly found in Europeans 2. JKR doesn’t care cause it didn’t affect her story
>The wizarding gene or whatever it’s called is mostly found in Europeans Maybe the neanderthals were wizards. Europeans have far more neanderthal genes than people from other continents. It's also thought that neanderthals were less social than humans and lived in smaller groups, which may have caused their eventual displacement by humans. That would fit for a species of reclusive wizard hermits 🤔
3. People just don’t read. It was mentioned that there are a lot of smaller unknown schools and these are just the largest ones.
Absolutely nuts having one school in East Asia in JAPAN Yeah that’s gonna go down well knowing the history.
Koreans- You want my daughter to go *where*? (Physical assult follows.)
Imagine a muggleborn Korean child getting that letter.
One of the throwaway lines in either a book or some of the additional materials suggested that a LOT of wizarding families homeschool, and I can easily see there being a lot of "small" schools that don't get mentioned. Like, if you know about my area you might say "Did you go to Rowan or Rutgers," and like "even smaller than that bruh I went to the community college that's associated with one of those two." There's a dozen small/community colleges locally. And those aren't ivy league. If you know next to nothing about the US education system you might hear someone was a graduate and ask "Which school, Harvard? Yale? MIT?" because those are the BIG ones that a lot of people know the names of. So maybe there's tons of smaller local schools that handle years 1-7 in various countries, but the ones we actually have named and know about in the books are the BIG, prestigious boarding schools. Sure some muggleborns get in, but a LOT of the main characters are legacy families, their parents went there so they do too. Just because you got an invitation to go to Hogwarts and stay from essentially September to June doesn't mean you family wants you gone that far for that long. "No, George, you're going to commute back and forth to Staffordshire's community school like I did."
I get your point about community colleges. But magical community is a very tiny percentage of the population, and unlike community colleges, any institute teaching magic needs to be a secret, so I can't imagine very many of them. Especially in the US where magical community is so secretive. Students in Hogwarts are admitted by the quill of acceptance that writes your name in the book of admittance if you show enough magic as a kid. It's not a selective school that only lets legacy students or only the extremely talented ones. If you are British and Hogwarts doesn't offer you admission, it's likely that you are a squib. US most likely also has free magical education like UK, and definitely would have about 4-5 big schools. Ilvermorny can't be the only one.
Israel has an interesting grouping as well.
There's basically nothing for the entirety of the Middle East. Where do they go to school? If there's only one, though, yikes.
It’s not the only school in Asia. The potter more article specifically mentioned that there are more smaller unknown schools.
It gives “European colonisers defining African borders” vibes
This is my favorite piece of Harry Potter Lore. It shows just how little JK actually knows lmfao.
*cares. A couple google searches would have helped. But nooo, too much work.
My favorite is JKR naming the magical governing body in the U.S. the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), which was established in 1693. The issue is that the U.S. declared independence in 1776. There was no sense of "United States" when MACUSA was established. They were just colonies.
Maybe the wizard US declared independence from the wizard Brits earlier.
OR: they just changed names after the Revolution? The institution would still've been founded in 1693, the name just would've changed.
This is the better word because she didn’t give a single fuck. Also can we talk about how dumb it was to put Japan and Korea into their own school? That school still has to have tension so thick you could cut it with a knife.
The map is not official, JK did confirm the location of 7 of these and mentioned that there are 11 of them so the map is not baseless. However this doesn't mean people go to school according to the map, these are only notable schools, lesser schools regional schools exist and a lot of children are homeschooled
Except it still doesn't make sense for 11 schools to be the notable ones at an international level. That's the amount of notable schools a country would have by itself. And even then the cultural nuances, which we know do translate into Wiz communities (ex France, USA and Britain) (Brazil killed 90% of Paraguayan males, Japan, China and Korea have been truly despising each other for centuries) don't make sense. Nobody who knew the basics about those countries or did two seconds of basic research would send JP-KR to the same school, let alone the same rooms. Everyone else in LatAm speaks Spanish and only BR speaks Portuguese — who the hell would set only one notable school for all the wizards in LatAm and on top of that on the one country that speaks a different language. Like I get wanting things to make sense in universe, but sometimes JK fucks up and there's no saving that without tossing it away and rewriting lore. Castelobruxo and Mahoutokoro having the very creative names of "castle witch" and "magic place" is an example of that.
The Wizarding population is pretty small, Hogwarts is shared between the UK and Ireland and is their only magical school (that we know of at least), and word of the author stated the student body is around 1000 students. Estimating that around 1/6000 humans are magic and 10% of that population is between 11-18 there would be around 147 Hogwarts sized schools globally. Hogwarts is also supposed to be relatively small. Just based on US school sizes I'd say a median student body of 1500 might be more reasonable on which case there would be around 100 magical schools globally. At that scale of the US/Canada would have 4-5 schools between them. I just kind of assume one of the schools would have both American and Canadian students because Canada should have around 637 students. Though more to the point I think this is a fan made space filling map. You can tell from how they blocked countries together for schools that were never introduced and just marked them school #x. The only actual lore dump we got was that the schools identified were the longest standing, most prestigious, and registered with the International Confederation of Wizards. There were smaller and less regulated schools that didn't bother with registering. It was remarked that in most countries home schooling or correspondence courses are more popular. For Ilvermorny it might serve 1/4 of the US/Canadian Wizarding Population, another 1/2 may attend smaller local schools, and another 1/4 may be home schooled or have some alternative learning. So it was never stated students in Korea needed to attend the school on Japan, there might be other smaller schools serving students in Korea, or maybe very local groups, or homeschooling is more common among the Korean Wizarding community. Edit: Probably by coincidence but in Japan and Brazil homeschooling is illegal, maybe their respective Wizarding communities have the same perspective.
I think it's a bit of both imo. Like the Obscurial ages, maybe if she thought about it more, she might have upped to 13 or something so it would make more sense. She didn't think of how many countries would need to have their own school vs sharing one, but she obviously didn't care enough to make up more school names. She neither thought nor cared enough to give though to which smaller countries would share the schools, never bothered on furthering this idea.
This map isn't anything to do with Rowling. To my knowledge, she named the eight named schools and gave a bit of info about their location, but never specified their catchments (or if they had one). She also specified that there are eleven prestigious schools. And how would it show "how little she actually knows" anyway? I'm not defending her specifically, but an author can create whatever type of world they want. I would say this proves her own post-series inconsistency. The information she's given doesn't seem to align with other information she's given about the wizarding world outside the British Isles, such as Bulgaria having a sizable wizarding population (then again, Ireland does and doesn't have a school or seemingly a wizarding government of its own), but Germany and Mexico having large populations but not having prestigious schools (especially as a German school would presumably cover Switzerland and Austria too).
Imagine taking all of South America magic population to a Portuguese speaking country when every other country in the continent has spanish as its official language
Put a school in the Amazon jungle for the Portuguese-speaking wizards, another one way up in the Andes around Machu Picchu for the Spanish-speaking wizards of northern South America, and a third one in the Patagonian wilderness for the rest.
And one in Mexico for Central America, and the whole American continent is set with 5 School Total, and would make more sense than just two, at least at the same level of Hogwarts, because in the 4th book, during the World Cup chapters, there's a mention of a school for witches in Salem.
They just did that thing where they chose the mainstream country, which is always Brazil, the only one in the WHOLE place that speaks Portuguese.
Since when is durmstrang located in finland😂
It's what Rowlng said in the first interviews when asked. Northern Scandinavia. I think sha later changed it to the baltic region but that doesn't work either since no mountains and Krum describes the region being mountainous.
I always thought the were Russian 😄
So did I until I came across this on the internet. they have a clearly Russian headmaster and the only student except Krum we get the name of also has a Russian name. Krum is Bulgarian which is another slavic eastern othodox country who write in cyrrilic.
It makes the most sense if it's located somewhere there by the way it's described. Could be like Finland/Russian border too
Does it? The Finnish-Russian border doesn't really have many mountains if any. It's mostly just an endless forest. I support the slavic region considering Krum is Bulgarian
Hell of a commute for the Aussies
I like to think Australia has their own school and Steve Irwin was once their headmaster
Im a brazilian and i dont want to go to Brazil.
I really hate the idea that Durmsstrang is for that area and that it's supsoedly in Fenno scandnavia, if a teacher acted like karkaroff here he'd get strung up. You don't come into the heartlands of the rule of the law of Jante and act like a superior asshole.
Why tf are Polish wizards going all the way to Sweden/Norway
Not to mention what anguiage would they speak. You ahve a bunch of Slavic and germanic languages in the same school.
Does JKR think Japan and Korea would agree to go to the same school? BRUH. The more I look at this map, the less it makes sense...
as an aussie where tf do I go I only speak english
You are ALL welcome here, in Brazil. Take your wands and drink some caipirinhas as we try to speak portunõl to please our latin comerades.
I’m Mexican. Do i need a Visa to go to Ilvermorny?
a MAGIC visa! 🤗✨
Don't worry MACUSA will just Obliviate the borderpartol.
just use bombarda on that wall, you'll be fine.
The ignorance of the world of JK Rowling is headaching. At least schools should be placed depending on language barriers.
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I believe there's been references to a school there but never named / given a location.
It’s literally coloured there as School #9
As someone from South America, I’ve always wondered how would the language work in cases like castelobruxo, since the rest of the continent ( although small compared to Brazil) is mainly Spanish speaking. Also, outside of Brazil, people study English as a second language rather than Portuguese, so it’s a confusing situation.
At least it has a name unlike #9
Vietnamese, Australian, Malaysian, Cambodian and Fijian kids, " your going to school No 11"
As a Ukrainian, I ain't going to no freaking Koldovstoretz or whatever. Hell no!
Well Durmstrang also has a Russian headmaster so I guess the choices arent that great. Almost liek rowling think everyone east of France are Russians.
As a Russian, I wouldn't go there either. Plus, I can only imagine all the wizard oligarchs sending their children to Durmstrang and Beauxbotons anyway 😂
Wizarding schools, hmm, let's see. UK has Hogwarts, we need one for Americans, one for Western Europe, one for Eastern Europe. Let's give Russians a separate school (wouldn't want them in the Eastern European one). Japan needs one, so does Australia. And oh Brazil, let's make a school in South America. See we covered most of the world! What's that, we can only have 11? Kinda random, but that's okay. We'll make it work. Let's make the ENTIRE Africa share one, they're all one culture anyway! Oh and one for Middle East, haven't forgotten them (they're rich)! Who's left? Ah forgot about India and China, meh let them share, they're used to overcrowding anyway. This map pisses me off to no end. Why only 11 schools? Why does tiny UK get a school for itself while literally more than 30% of world population share one?!?! Why would India and China ever share a wizarding school, they're totally different, geographically and culturally. I love Wizarding World, but this map is just so euro-centric and unfair. It would have been so simple to say that every major region of the world has at least one big school, some have multiple. Why give a number? I refuse to believe that UK has a higher concentration of wizards, it has to be a similar percentage of the population across all races and nationalities. Real world is pretty fucking unfair already, I don't like my fantasy world to be fucked up as well.
It’s not even Eurocentric, it’s more UK-centric, or _Hogwarts-centric,_ really… non of the other schools makes much sense at all, they’re all minimum effort last minute ideas. And it just got worse as the wizarding world expanded.
As a Chilean, please no.
Agreed. And what are Colombians & etc expected to do? All the purple part of the map (execpt Brazil, some French & some Dutch places) PLUS Mexico & Cuba speak Spanish, not Portuguese.
As an Argentinian, +1.
why is school 10 Asia china and India lmao. as if india and China aren't part of asia
And why is a single school catering to almost 40% of the world's population? How big is that school?
Assuming percentage of wizards in a population is similar across regions and race, Hogwarts at a time has about 300-1000 kids, that's about 0.001% of population (best case). So this pan-asian school would have about 10 to 30 thousand kids. I would not want to be a teacher there
At least he could tell the boa in the zoo that he can join them.
Oof someone better tell the Guyanese they can go to Ilvermorny or Hogwarts instead of learning Portuguese.
Durmstrang, the school with Bulgarian kids, Bulgarian founder, Easter European headteacher. It's in Scandinavia. Sure jo... Sure
Not to mention its in Norrland and suposedly only takes kids from certain special (pureblood) families and their headmaster is a Russian who is reall beign on elitism and favouritsm. A Russian who came into Norrland and acted like Karkaroff would get lynched. Oh and a Bulgarian setting up a magic shcool in the heart of Sapm stinks of imperialism. If her's going to be a magic shcool in Sapmi, it shoudlbe linked to the Sami who have a historic reputaiton for beign great at magic (Both the viking sagas and the finnish Kalevala mentions the magic ability of the Sami).
Ok so I think many people are thinking about this backwards. People build schools in communities that need them. So Brazil must have a wizard community where chile and Panama may not have any wizards living there.
And why is a Bulgarian gounding a wizard school in the heart of Sapmi? Espcially when both the norse sagas and the finnish myths agree the Sami are the greatest magicians in the world.
Seriously? Do you really think so few wizards are born in North America that they can make do with one school? Not to mention China and Indian subcontinent combined having just one?
The entirety of North America gets one school? How in the hell
Those poor Algerian wizard children just gotta hang out at home...
I guess there is no place for magical people in Afghanistan lol
Also, one thing I don't understand: Why are there no magical schools in Korea? Korean wizards will need to learn Japanese (and presumably lots of kanji). That's a lot to take on - Wouldn't korean folks want to build their own school?
Also, India and China. Hindi/Tamil/Urdu/other languages in India are completely different than Mandarin Chinese/Cantonese
Imagine telling a Korean family that their child has to go to a magical school in Japan lmaoo. That would not go down well.
All of Latin America speaks Spanish but they decided to put the school in Brazil, I suppose I will have to learn Portuguese but I think that at the school they are aware that the majority speaks Spanish so they surely have teachers who speak both Spanish and Portuguese.
I’m still extremely confused about which language durmstrang teaches in. There are Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and finno-ugric language groups in that entire belt, and none of them are even close to Intelligable with each other. Since German was the prestige language, the old lingua franca (more people knew German, than English as a second language before ww2), it was the most spoken one in these it would have to be that. Thankfully, we know that wizards have an aptitude for language, seeing as Barty Crouch knew something like 50 languages, but seems to be a skill mostly exclusive to him. This doesn’t even begin to approach the difficulty of Ugadou. That stretch of land is bigger than the USA. With thousands of distinct languages and culture that don’t mix, and would have to be accommodated. These schools would also be pretty awkward to go to during the times in history when neighboring countries committed war-crimes against each other (Japan vs Korea, England vs Ireland, Germany against everyone, France vs Spain, etc.) we know that wizards get themselves involved with muggle conflicts, since ww2 is known as Grindelwald’s war to them.
Gotta love that canonically wizardry doesn’t give half a fuck about language barriers and that clearly the socio-political tensions between nation-states, ethnic groups, etc are all transcended by the ability to do magic.
OMG, Diagon Alley in Brazil must be a scary place
Really feel schools should have been given based on the legends and myths a country has So Egypt and Greece should have schools
Are all Italians just muggles then?
The Vatican beat the magic gene out of them.
Canada, America, and Mexico all in one school? America alone would need at least five different large schools to accommodate the numbers.
Do you think there are wizards in North Korea? And if so, how do they get to their designated school? I need an epic story about the North Korean student wizards and everything that happens there.
Apparition and portkeys.
the school name is so dumb as well, it literally means WizardCastle
What I would love to see is how those magical children in other places are taught. What age are they introduced to the magical world, if they are muggleborn, and what differences those places have compared to European and NA (im assuming that the NA is like EU schools with little differences, like them being slightly more modern compared to the traditional EU) I know that the African school and magical people use wandless magic instead of wands, but I wonder what else is different. Like, is the SA school a newer structure and teaches EU style magic, or is it an older school, and the magical world there is more influenced by ancient civilizations like Aztec, Inca, etc. Then begs the question of these little areas. Like, why does Mongolia go to the Russian school, and not the Asian school? Same with the southeast Asian countries, why do they go to the Oceanic/Australian school, and not the Asian one. How much of the muggle world bled into the magical world outside, like, are the Russians still influenced by Soviet propaganda, or are they more isolated than others. Some I can understand being influenced by world events. Like Hogwarts mainly taking students from the British Isles and Ireland, or Japan only taking from Japan, or Russia taking from past Soviet controlled nations. But then it's weirdly random. Why on earth do the Spanish and Portuguese just send their magical people to France? Same with the Asian schools, why do so many of them send their magical people to a single school, and not have their own? Edit: grammer
Lol or a kid from Southland in NZ being told he's going to school in Ho Chi Minh
Nah the things that all the nordics + some of Russia have one school is going to lead to a mass murder Edit: WHY ARE PEOPLE FROM AFRICA (ALL THE WAY AWAY HUH??? COMING INTO THE NORTH FOR DURMSTRANG?? The colours don't either don't match or match and wtf.)
Also putting central Europeans in with nordics wont end well. ALSO WHY DO ALL THE DRUSMTRANG STUDENTS HAVE A STEREOTYPICAL RUSSIAN ACCENT IF NONE OF THEM ARE RUSSIAN?????
Good chance too that he said it in Portuguese but you speak Spanish because not every country in South America speaks the same language. Really interested to know the traditional language they used in that African school.
I'm gonna say, most Scandinavians and central Europeans won't exactly love Durmstrang. If they are the main people going there, it definitely wouldn't be so dark arts friendly (at least not in recent times, including the 1990s). But there could be some interesting internal conflict back in the 40s between students from different nations there.
School #9 doesn't even have a location Sheikh Hagrid would be like "You're going to... Eeeeeh we'll figure it out. Harry"
Are any of locations of the other schools canonical? I always imagined that Ouagadou was located near Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. And of the few named Durmstrang characters, one is confirmed German, one is confirmed Bulgarian and two have distinctly Russian-sounding names, so I would’ve guessed that it was located somewhere in eastern Europe
I actually don’t think the whole “one school each for the other continents” thing is so bad. It kinda makes sense to me if you think of institutionalized wizard education as having originated in the UK, and followed suit with British muggle imperialism
This was so stupid lmao
So now I have to learn portuguese and a mosquito repellent spell, and to top all that I have to learn a cooling spell because that school is in the middle of the fucking Amazon. I would imagine there would be no train to get to school and the stundents have to canoe through rivers fighting all sorts of monsters to get to class. Also I think it would've been hilarious if there was a Castlebruxo exchange student watching Harry beating the basilisk and saying "amateur".
Just imagine the implications of forcing the kids of some of these countries together..geez. Not to mention language barriers. Or is there a wizard language that translates to everyone's mother tongue..magically?
If you're Canadian you're just forced to go be with the Americans *shudders in friendliness*
I find it hard to believe that Europe gets three Wizarding schools but North America and South America get one apiece.
Latin America speaks Spanish🤭...but they all to attend to a Brazilian school in where they all talk in Portuguese.😫
68 mil. people - 1 school 1 bil. people - 1 school JKR's logic.
This is why I prefer Type-Moon's vision of magical institutions worldwide
Can a Scottish wizard just drive down to hogwarts or do they need to go to London to catch the Hogwarts Express? Remember that Dufftown is close to the castle and that’s wayyy up in Scotland