Why *are* the spells in HP all mangled Latin?

[conuly]

Is it just because Latin is cool? Or is there some reason for it? Would spells from other countries sound different... ooh! Does that mean that maybe Chinese people have completely different spells, or even that there's some language difficulties - no "translation" for reparo, you have to do something different, but they have a spell that wouldn't exist in England...?

On a tangentially-related note, despite whatever you have heard, alea iacta est does *not* mean "the die is cast". Latin has a really messed up tense system. Third principle part + is = has been. Don't ask me why. So "alea iacta est" means that the die has been cast, not that it is cast.

Comments

[tinchen.livejournal.com]

I thought the name/words of a spell are chosen by the one "inventing" the spell. So some spells might date back from a time when Latin was the language of wisdom/science, thus are "have Latin names" and people today might see this as a tradition. I believe there are some non-Latin spells, too.

Apart from that Latin spells have a tradition, many "real" spells from the middle-ages that you find books are in Latin.