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LETTERS OF HARRY

This page contains a gallery of how "Harry Potter" is written in different alphabets and syllabaries on book covers. I researched the different writing systems of the world and wrote this essay. Hopefully it won't be as boring as one of Professor Binns' History of Magic lectures.

UNITED STATES: This title design, with the sharp-edged, raised lettering and lightning bolt coming off the "P," apparently originated with Scholastic Books of New York City, New York. Bloomsbury, the original British publisher, has never used it and continues to sell its HP books with plain block lettering. The one exception in the United Kingdom has been on the audio cassette versions. This title has now been trademarked, and in newer editions of Harry Potter books, is identified as a trademark of Warner Bros. The studio is using the same title design for the movies.

Many other non-English speaking countries have begun using the "Lightning Bolt Harry" title. Some either have used it from the beginning or starting around The Goblet of Fire. They either write it in the Roman letters as shown above, or in their own alphabet or syllabary (an "alphabet" of symbols representing syllables).

Countries using the Roman title, other than the U.S., are Croatia, Czech Republic, China (also in Chinese characters), Denmark (Book 4), Estonia, Germany (Book 4), Hungary, Iceland (starting with Book 2), Indonesia, Japan (with Japanese characters) Latvia (written in Latvian as "Harijs Poters"), Portugal, Canada (French Canadian/Quebec), Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain and Latin America (Castilian dialect, starting with Book 4), Spain (Catalan dialect, Book 4), Sweden (starting with Book 3), Turkey and Vietnam (full version of Book 1).

"Harry Potter" as written in this title uses the Roman, or Latin, alphabet. This alphabet consists of 26 letters in English and more or less the same quantity in other languages that use it. Some unique characters may be added to other Roman alphabets, such as this strange thing - "ß" - which in German is a double S ("ss"). Special accent marks also might be used, such as "é."

The Roman alphabet is found most commonly in the European language groups, but Indonesia and Vietnam also use it.

The Roman alphabet can be traced back to Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician writing systems as early as 600 B.C./B.C.E. The Greek civilization and culture heavily influenced the Roman one, and there is a direct connection between the Greek and Roman alphabets. The original alphabet had 23 letters, with J, U and W rising from I and V over the centuries.

GREECE: Harry's name becomes roughly "Chari Poter." The first letter of his first name is a sound not found in English, but is in Greek, Hebrew and German, and is something like "kh" said with a roughness and the tongue touching the roof of the mouth.

The Greek writing system is an alphabet dating back nearly 3,000 years. The Greek alphabet is notable for adding vowel sounds to the consonants, so that when a word was written, the reader did not have to guess its meaning. The previous writing system had no vowels. The classic Greek system of ancient times had 24 letters. The Roman and Cyrillic alphabets can trace their ancestry directly back to the Greek.

Greek capital letters are very familiar to Americans who have attended colleges or universities and have either seen or belonged to fraternities and sororities, social or honors groups that use the letters for their names.

CYRILLIC: Russian, the language of the country spanning from Europe into Asia, is the best-known one that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. The many languages that use this writing system include Bulgarian, Serbian and Ukrainian.

The Cyrillic alphabet is named in honor of St. Cyril, a 9th century monk credited with its invention. Cyril was a Greek from the city of Thessalonica who became a Christian missionary to the Slavs of southern Europe. Historians do not know for sure if he really invented this alphabet.

Cyrillic letters are based on the “uncial” version of the Greek alphabet, which has letters made from simple, rounded strokes. Greek letters – along with two Hebrew ones – were turned into a 43-letter alphabet. Some 33 characters are used in the modern Slavic languages, and text is read from left to right, like Roman and Greek. The example shown above is from the Bulgarian edition of The Sorcerer’s Stone and in Roman letters would be “Khary Potr.”

HEBREW: This is the alphabet of the original language of the Jewish people, appearing in its earliest form before the 6th century B.C./B.C.E. Classical or “square” Hebrew letter appear by the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C./B.C.E. and over 1,500 years developed into the alphabet used today, particularly in Israel and in Jewish sacred texts. The modern alphabet was influenced both by Hebrew and writings in Aramaic, a closely related language most likely spoken by Jesus and his followers.

The Hebrew alphabet is unique in that it has just 22 consonants and no vowels; however, vowels may be marked in Jewish scriptures. It is read from right to left, which is a characteristic found in other Middle Eastern alphabets. The writing above is approximately "Harj Potr."

FARSI: This language, traditionally called Persian, is spoken by most citizens of Iran, some parts of Afghanistan, and Kazhikstan, a former Soviet republic. It is in the large Indo-European language group, which is a separate family from the one that contains Arabic. The language is related to some extent to Arabic, as is its alphabet, but they are not exactly the same.

Farsi has 32 symbols created from 18 general shapes, and like Hebrew is written and read from right to left. Three double, long vowels, AA, EE and OO, also have symbols. The short A, E and O are indicated with marks above, below or attached to the consonant symbols.

JAPAN: Japanese uses three syllabaries, or syllable “alphabets,” to write text. The first is called the kanji, which means “Chinese characters” in Japanese, and consists of thousands of symbols traced back to China nearly 4,000 years ago. The government has designated about 2,000 of them for everyday use.

The second character set is the hiragana, used to tell how words may be used; for example if a noun is subject or object, and other grammatical functions. The last syllabary is the katakana, used most often to spell out foreign names or words from other languages, except Chinese. Japanese is read from left to right when written horizontally, but often is vertical in newspapers and magazines. Then it is read from right to left.

Harry’s name is spelled in this image in the katakana set. The katakana and hiragana symbols represent syllables that are one consonant and one vowel, such as “HA.” Because the syllables never end in a consonant, Harry’s last name loses its “r” and became “HA-RI PO-TAA” in the katakana.

CHINESE (TRADITIONAL): The kanji of Japan are called “hanzi” in Chinese dialects. The first characters were found on fortune-telling bones that were estimated to be 3,500 years old. There is no one language called “Chinese,” instead there are many dialects, such as Cantonese, Hakka and Mandarin, the world’s most spoken tongue. (English is the second). There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters that students can master.

Taiwan and Hong Kong use the “traditional” characters, which have more brush strokes and could take more work to write than the “simplified” characters in mainland China. The Taiwan Harry Potter editions from Crown Publishing Co. Ltd. are in the traditional characters. Because there is no “R” sound in the Chinese dialects, the R's in Harry’s name vanish. It becomes “Ha-Li Po-Te,” pronounced HAH-LEE PO-TUH. Interestingly enough, the character representing HA means “sound of laughter” in Chinese.

CHINESE (SIMPLIFIED): In 1949, the Communist Party took over mainland China, the world’s third largest nation and its most populous, with 1 billion people. As part of the changes to Chinese society, the Communists decided a simplified writing system was needed so that more people could become literate. Since the Communist revolution, the simplified character set has been created and is widely used in the country.

The characters used in the Harry Potter edition still are very much like the traditional ones on the Taiwan books. They also spell out the same “Ha-Li Po-Te.” Chinese, which some think is always written right to left. It is read that way if written vertically, and often is on shop signs as well. But if it is horizontal, it is read from left to right like Roman or Cyrillic texts.

THAI: This beautiful alphabet hybrid traces its roots back to King Ramkhamhaeng, a ruler who wanted his people to have a strong separate identity from others living around them in East Asia. Like many nations of the region, Thailand has connections to mainland China. The Thai people originally came from China around 400 B.C./B.C.E. They were ruled first by the Mon and later by the Khmer (Cambodians) before becoming an independent kingdom.

King Ramkhanhaeng’s grandson, King Li Thai, supported and saw the development of a second script that was named in his honor in the 1350s. In 1680, the King Narai alphabet was introduced and is the current symbol set used by Thais today. The alphabet contains 44 consonants, nine single vowels, 12 diphthongs (two vowels making one sound) and three triphthongs (three vowels making one sound). Thai is often written with no spaces between words and from left to right. The letter that looks like a “W” with a lightning bolt is actually the “P” of Potter.

KOREAN: The Korean alphabet is known in the native language as “Hangul.” King Sejong started the effort to develop this alphabet in 1443-44, with its final proclamation in 1446.

King Sejong wanted more of the working and middle class people of his kingdom to learn to write. Up to the time that Hangul was created, words were written in Chinese characters and mostly understood and read by the educated and weathy. Sejong’s 28-character system was originally called “Hunmin chong-um,” which means “correct sounds to instruct the people.” The characters are used to build slightly more complex symbols that represent syllables. Chinese characters are still used along with the Hangul in many printed materials.

Harry’s name is a series of these syllables, consisting of characters attached to each other. The syllables spell out “Ha Ri Po To,” which would be said “HAH-REE PAH-TUH.”

Now, I venture further into the Professor Binns zone with this stuff about the languages in which the HP books appear.

The diagram below shows the languages into which the Harry Potter books have been translated and their classification based on what branch of the Indo-European group they fall. The Indo-European languages are thought to begun with one early tongue in central Turkey about 6,000 years. People migrating out of the region became isolated, and their languages began to change.

A religious explanation also has been given for the development of many languages. In the Old Testament of the Bible (or first book of the Torah), the story of the Tower of Babel is given as the explanation for many languages. In Genesis 11, a group of people thought they could build a tower straight up to heaven. God became upset at their arrogance and gave them many different languages, so they became confused and stopped their construction. The tower was thought by some to be in the south part of Mesopotamia, which today is part of Iraq.

English is considered a Germanic language, though occupations of the United Kingdom by the ancient Romans (Latin) and the Norman French also caused a major influx of words from those languages into it. It's the simpler words in English that still resemble some in modern German: dog is hund, which is a lot like the English hound.

Ancient Romans living all over Europe, such as in the areas of Spain and France, were so isolated from central capital of Rome that new dialects began to form. These became the Romance languages, which include Spanish, Italian and French.

The Balto-Slavic languages developed in Eastern Europe. What alphabet they use is determined by religion -- Catholics use the Roman letters, and Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic.

The Hellenic branch is modern Greek. The Indo-Iranian branch includes Farsi, the language of modern Iran.

Finnish and Estonian are not Indo-European languages, but instead are in their own small family called the Uralic, after the Ural Mountains of Russia. The Finns trace thehir ancestry to the peoples who lived in Siberia east of the Urals.

The Altaic family includes the major languages of east and central Asia and Turkey. The family is named after the Alti mountains of Central Asia, and its speakers were nomads who spread out over Asia and Europe. Korean and Japanese are also Altaic languages.

The Sino-Tibetan group includes all the major Chinese dialects, such as Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka. They are known as "monosyllabic tonal languages," which in plain English means that words are formed with single syllables with one vowel sound. Mandarin has 1,600 of these syllables!