Magical Deductions: Parseltongue in IPA
(I’m no expert. Corrections welcome.)
/saijaχasaʃi || saijaχasijɛθ/
Clip of this scene: on YouTube
/xɛʃ χa sa/
/ʃjaχs aŋgaʈas sɛliθɨin/
/saθai hɛθɛs/
Nagini: /χalχ sakaθ aχa/
Harry: /sanaχ/
Nagini: /sɛlɛtɛs/
/saija χasaθ alasajaʃɛ/
/sɛs lɛθjo loçin || haʃɛʃ nana…
Wow. I’m completely impressed with this. I’ve done transcription before and it’s painful, painstaking work.
I remember at the beginning of August I watched the films again and wondered whether Parseltongue was a legitimate conlang, or just a bunch of sibilants and coronals strung together. I was also very drunk at the time.
Some advice: When creating a Harry Potter drinking game, do not make a rule stating that you have to take a shot when “Voldemort” is spoken or a house receives points. You will not make it past Sorceror’s Stone.
Apparently, a professor named Francis Nolan came up with Parseltongue. I submitted the link to this post on reddit, and someone commented saying they knew Prof. Nolan and had been told that it had grammar and everything (apparently it’s ergative-absolutive). So it’s a legitimate conlang, it’s just nothing’s every officially been written about it.
(PS: I take that advice as a challenge…)
What I want to know is, even if Harry talks in his sleep, how did Ron know which phrase(s) would open the Chamber? Or would it respond to any valid Parseltongue? If so, wouldn’t someone who wanted in just have to sit there hissing at it long enough? I mean, there aren’t /that/ many hiss-y phonemes within human pronunciation ability… Surely it wouldn’t take /that/ long to hit on a valid word.
