WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and I created this podcast for students at intermediate and upper intermediate levels who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode, comprehension quiz, and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast.

Usually, I am telling a story from my life but this episode will be special. Because today I will be talking about Harry Potter.

There are several reasons why I wanted to speak about Harry Potter. First of all, it was my favorite book and film series when I was younger and I still like it very much. And I grew up with that. Second of all, it has become an important part of English literature and it is considered one of the greatest stories from modern anglophone literature and I suppose that there are not many people who haven’t about this series and I bet that the majority of you have seen the movies or read the books. And because I studied literature and I love learning language through reading, I thought it will be fun to talk about some interesting facts about Harry Potter. It is fun because it is full of new words that you might know only in your native language. It is fun for me to discover French names in Harry Potter World as I am reading the third part in French right now.

I prepared 11 fun facts about Harry Potter. Why 11? Because Harry was 11 when his story began so I thought it would be a nice number. But because it would be a longer episode, I decided to split it into two parts, so in this part, we will look at the first five fun facts and next week I will share the remaining 6. Okay? Okay.

So let’s go.

Number one: I think it is important to mention the English names of things and people in the Harry Potter world. Here I will be referring back to the Czech language so did you understand well so I am very sorry if you are not Czech. But at least you will learn those names in two languages at once.

First I will be talking about the school. In Czech, we call it Bradavice. In English, it is Hogwarts. In Hogwarts, we have four houses in a check they are Nebelvír, Mrzimor, Zmijozel a Havraspár. In English, they are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Ravenclaw. Gryffindor is Nebelvír, Hufflepuff is Mrzimor, Slytherin is Zmijozel and Ravenclaw is Havraspár. Do you know in which house you would be? Let me know!

Then I want to mention Brumbál, which is Dumbledore in English. Dumbledore is the headmaster of Hogwarts.

Do you know the famous school game they play on brooms? In Czech it is Famfrpál but in English, it is called Quidditch.

The small town close to Hogwarts, in Czech Prasinky, is called Hogsmeade and the place where Harry could buy all his books, Příčná ulice, is called Diagon Alley.

There are, of course, so many new words but I will mention only a few more. Mozkomor is called Dementor in English – so in Azkaban, they have Dementors.

And do you know the name of the ghost girl living in the girls‘ toilets? She is called Moaning Myrtle. To moan means a long, low sound made by a person expressing physical or mental suffering.

And how would you call a person who cannot do magic? In English, we call that person a Muggle.

We have some basic vocabulary of the table and we can move on to number two.

Number two: Did you know that the first book and movie are called differently in American and British English?

In British English, it is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. And in American English, it’s called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because in America they don’t use the word philosopher in this meaning. They wanted to call it Harry Potter and the School of Magic but the author JK Rowling didn’t want that.

Number three: Do you remember the mirror that Harry found in the first movie? The mirror where he could see his parents? It was called a mirror of Erised. And if you look at the word Erised, it is the word Desire backward. Desire is a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. So it is literally a mirror that shows you something that you want and you wish for very much.

Number four: All of the actors and actresses that are in the movies are strictly British and Irish. There are no actors from other countries and JK Rowling refused many actors from the United States because she wanted only British actors because it is a British series set in Britain and she wanted to keep it that way.

Number five: The Castle Hogwarts is very inspired by Edinburgh. If you ever visit Edinburgh and you visit the university that is in that city, you will see that it is like being in Hogwarts. Also, Hogwarts, the school of magic, is located in Scotland in the books. It is never written like this but the kids go from London on the train for several hours to the north of the country so it is clear that they have to arrive in Scotland. Also, the movies were shot in different locations but one of them was Scotland.

JK Rowling also wrote the first book in different tea and coffee houses in Edinburgh. The most famous one is called „The Elephant House“ and even today you can find a wall dedicated to JK Rowling in that coffee shop. When I was in Edinburgh I had to go to see it because I was a big fan of Harry Potter.

Okay and because it is taking longer than I thought, as I said in the beginning we will leave it here and continue with number six next time.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and if you liked it, don’t forget to give it five stars on the platform you are listening to me right now.

Also, let me know if you like this type of podcast or if you prefer the ones with the stories. You can always write me a message on Instagram where I am @dajinka73.

If you want to check your comprehension or you didn’t understand some phrases you can check out the transcription, comprehension quiz and vocabulary list in the description. That is all for this week thank you so much again and I will talk to you next week bye,bye.