I know the story back-to-front and therefore can fill in the inevitable gaps in my knowledge of French vocabulary pretty easily. When la rentrée (beginning of the school year) arrives, you’ll need to catch the Poudlard Express (Hogwarts Express) on la voie 9 ¾ [that fraction is pronounced as trois-quarts] (Platform 9 ¾). It totally ruins the alliterative quality of his name and all of the beautiful Slytherin (‘Serpentard’) connections that come with it.

That’s just a gross oversimplification of the story, but if you’re interested, you can read all 4,224 pages in the series to discover everything.In French, “rogue” is not someone who makes their own rules, it’s an old rare word meaning “arrogant” or “unpleasant. For example, Mad-Eye Moody becomes Maugrey Fol Œil, a reference to the verb "maugréer" (which means to mumble). The topic of this article is of a real-life subject that has been mentioned " in-universe" in a canon source. And if you’re a Harry Potter fan, I definitely recommend giving the Harry Potter series a read in your language of choice.

During the summer of 1995, when Rubeus Hagrid and Olympe Maxime went to parlay with the giants, they pretended that they were going on holiday in France to throw off the Ministry official that was tracking them. It was spoken natively by millions around the world and was an official language of numerous countries, including France, Belgium, and Canada. The earlier prints of these larger editions had the cover art inset to the top right corner (books 1-3 can be found like this).Ménard rejoiced in reinventing Rowling’s invented names in French, saying it came naturally and is what he enjoyed the most. So he used the French for a path ‘chemin’ and then the French word for crooked/askew ‘traverse’, but just like ‘Diagon Alley’ has a nice even ring to it so does ‘crooked path’ in French.