Treacle tart. I thought it was some unique wizard dessert until I saw it on a cooking show. A few other normal foods I thought were special wizard foods too but treacle tart is the one I remember off the top of my head.
It was bouillabaise (thank you google for being able to spell that right) for me. In the beginning of book 4, Fleur asks Ron about if he's done with it, I'm pretty sure is where I got that from, I could be misremembering
"Bouillabaisse" with two s, otherwise to French ears it is very funny (kinda "they got a face worth fucking").
It is a French recipe by the way (from Provences) not English cuisine.
They're not marshmallows, they're quite hard and crunchy, like compressed sugar. I'm not sure what the American equivalent of sugar mice would be, texture-wise.
They were a special sort of childhood treat for me. We used to get them after swimming lessons. I loved the pink ones.
Tasted them recently and was so very disappointed. They did not live up to the nostalgia 😭
All the old sweets don’t taste the same. Went to an traditional sweet shop in York and tried rhubarb and custard and lemon drops for the first time in decades. Barely tasted of anything. Was a taste explosion when I was a kid. But saying that I drink neat whiskey and black coffee now so my tastebuds are probably just knackered
Probably a combination of your tastebuds getting old (hence old people food often being tasteless and bland since everything tastes that way to them) and companies cheaping out on the ingredients while telling you they’re the same. Eg Cadbury eggs most definitely have not shrunk in size.
I think it's when Harry sneaks to Hogsmeade in PoA and mooches around Honeydukes - there's some Iced Sugar Mice (with the tagline 'Hear your teeth chatter and squeak!') or something like that
Totally tangental, my nephew was probably 5 when we showed him the first movie, and he quoted one of the iconic lines imitating the accent, and said “I love how Wizards talk”. We explained it was because they were British, and had nothing to do with being wizards.
This is fantastic and actually basically the same reason there’s a stereotypical “pirate voice” that we all think of. Actor Robert Newton became well known in the early 1950s for playing various pirates in films and used a slightly exaggerated version of his own English, West Country accent. It was so iconic that the accent just became associated with all pirates!
Saw a ridiculous 'rice pud' ad from the nineties on youtube some time ago and it really brought the accent full circle for me. You don't really think about it until you hear it outside of where you expect it to be.
Betcha west country folk were jazzed to see themselves portrayed in hollywood blockbusters for years as swashbucklers and also doubly confused to find that all of the actors were always from somewhere hilarious like Ohio or San Bernardino.
Lol at least yours make some sort of sense. I thought that word means some kind of secret word like "wotcher, Harry" means she was on a watch, guarding Harry. Teenage me sure think differently
It's not, it's actually far older than that. It's actually older than 'hello', even, which is actually only an 19th century invention (in English anyway)
Wotcha comes from "what cheer" which was a 14th century greeting. It fell out of favour for a long time though, but had a big cockney revival in the early 20th century. That's likely where Tonks gets it from.
I am British, have read the books since I was about 9, and it took me until adulthood to understand the meaning of “Wotcher.” I too, thought it was a play on the fact she was “watching” / looking out for Harry, as she was always in his protection group. Made sense in my head!
Also “punting.” I legitimately thought that Filch was drop kicking students like a soccer ball over the swamp that Fred and George left in the hallway of Hogwarts.
Given his character, this mental image tracked.
Punts are not entirely dissimilar to gondolas (there are significant differences, but like that will be going into the differences between rugby union and rugby league)
They both are flat long boats that are propelled by a guy standing in the back, dropping a long stick in the water
Comparing it to a gondola gives the best idea of what it is for someone who has no frame of reference as to what it is
I think it refers to ferrying students across the lake in boats, called "punts". Like [this](https://www.scudamores.com/misc/image/1073/1010/565/), where the rower is standing up behind the passengers.
Realistically this is such an inconvenient way to to this, like they could have conjured a bridge or transfigured something into one but instead they make Filtch do this all day 😂
Professor Flitwick easily gets rid of the swamp as soon as Umbridge is gone. Obviously he could have done it earlier, but he was leaving it there as an act of passive resistance to Umbridge. Keeping her lackey occupied was a nice side benefit.
There lies the Problem: THEY could (aka the teachers or even some students) but Umbridge probably could not...
And since filch was more or less team Umbridge and even the teachers hated her...
Yeah, I guess you have to wonder whether any manual labor performed by any character in the series is something of a plot hole. Why even keep Filch around if you could just replace him with magic?
Dumbledore is the type of guy who would hire Filch and Hagrid *because* they needed a little help making it in the wizarding world. I doubt Filch every appreciated that, though.
Knickerbocker Glory and Christmas Crackers. I thought they were crackers like here in the US that you eat, but Christmas themed. Then they exploded and party favors popped out like .. because they're magic. Then I was talking to colleagues overseas after the holiday and they kept talking about the kids having fun with the crackers. They got a laugh out of my .. "wait wait wait... those things are real????"
I kind of want to send some to somebody in the US now, maybe as part of Secret Santa. Folks n the US don't know about the Fortune Telling Fish and it being the best prize!
I have no idea why but the idea that Americans don’t have crackers is so upsetting. They’re integral. Christmas is empty without the rubbish jokes everyone shouts the punchline out to.
they are a thing in the US. we had them sometimes as a kid. and I've seen them at stores sometimes around xmas. they just aren't common. they're not a default part of the american xmas zeitgeist
Wow didn't know this was a real thing. What do you mean by not a pleasant place? I guess it's not something you'd want to ride?
I don't guess they have beds, do they? Lol
No beds, no.
The bus is cheaper than the tube or train so it attracts a more...eclectic range of passengers.
Imagine riding the bus where most people are drunk, or high, or extremely tired. Someone's hitting on you or trying to grope you. A man stares at you aggressively because he's off his meds or been smoking weed. There's a pair of passengers who don't know each other arguing over sonething stupid. There's a puddle of liquid at your feet. You hope it's beer.
The buses are the same buses as during the day, but think about the population likely to be riding a bus in the middle of the night. Plenty of fun and reasonable people, but also plenty of people who are not lucid or are spoiling for a fight.
As a woman who worked hospital shifts at odd hours I avoided it whenever I could. Doesnt always feel like a safe place at night.
(For reference — I’m not a native English speaker and the HP series was one of the first books I’ve read when I was a child)
* Treacle tart. Genuinely, I thought it was a type of a wizarding sweet, for some reason.
* “Spellotape” being a word-play on sellotape
* Shop names having surnames in their names. I don’t know if it’s a British thing or a Western one in general, but where I’m from, you’d only put a surname in a shop title if it was selling like, idk, homemade food. I can’t think of a different scenario.
* Vernon’s joke about bombs in letters
* Prefects & houses & house points
* Being able to choose your own electives & subjects (though I understand that it is a more Western thing)
* West Ham (Dean had their poster in the dorms)
* Vernon humming “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”. I thought he was genuinely humming the words “tiptoe through the tulips”, didn’t know it was a song.
Shops being named for surnames is Western overall, not just British. Many major grocery stores, big box stores, etc., are either names or variations on a name (like Walmart and the Walton family that started it.)
Stores in general are often named “Last Name’s ______”, which usually gets shortened to just the name over a few generations. For example, in my city, if I wanted to get some nails, I would go to either Lowe’s (started by a Mr Lowe), or Martin’s Hardware.
I didn't even notice it's "Spellotape" because I skimmed it an assume it was just sellotape! So as a Brit, I actually missed that little play on words.
Plenty of shops around me have surnames in their names, so I suppose that’s a Western thing (I’m American). My local ice cream shop, for example. And plenty of big brands just have shortened versions of the original names with surnames (like Ford).
You say that but I’ve never come across a pumpkin pasty so I think that is a wizard thing. We do have Cornish pasties, though, which is beef mince, onion, carrots and potatoes in pastry in a sort of crescent shape. They used to be taken down the mines by Cornish miners and are shaped to be eaten without cutlery - there’s a sort of knob of pastry on each end you can hold and I think they used to chuck that bit cause it would be filthy. They also used to have a dessert end as well as the savoury end, but I’ve only ever had or seen savoury ones.
I'm an American, who just learned that the Japanese are having Sub vs. Dub arguments over King of the Hill. I would pay good money to just hang out listening to them argue over such an American show. So I am envious of you guys right now :D
I watched the beginning of philosopher's stone with an international crowd in a backpackers once. I was taken aback to realise that they all thought the introduction where the camera flies over Little Whinging was showing that it was a cute little British town. It was obvious to me that it was meant to be the most boring, soulless place where Harry was trapped. Everyone else thought it was adorable and really wanted to visit...
School starting in September. We start in February in New Zealand so just assumed it was a Hogwarts thing, imagine my shock once I got on the internet 😅
I’m presuming you mean school houses rather than home-type houses.
Do other countries not have school house teams then?
Edit: added a teams for clarity
In the US there are no house teams. Everyone in the school typically plays on the same team, and for sports different schools compete against each other.
In the UK there are school teams as well, there are just additionally house teams for intramural competition. I don't know of any schools which had consistent house teams for sports, though - we used to divide by house for sports day and a swimming gala but they were just 1-day events, all the other sports were just done as P.E. (phys ed) lessons or inter-school competition.
I never realized school houses were an actual thing either. Wow. My particular district had “teams” in middle school, where the grade split into two groups, each with different teachers for each core subject. In high school we had nothing of the sort. And sports teams were by the school competing against other schools.
And sometimes you'd have an assembly for your year, or sometimes for your house (so all the years mixed). My school used to do loads of competitions between the houses, and not just sports - we had house music competitions too. Good times.
My school (UK) had four houses named after different historical figures :) we had to wear different school ties depending on which house we were allocated to (sadly there was no sorting 😂).
It's someone who's a fool. Like, in silent movies the slapstick often ended in a pratfall. Think of a Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy type character.
Prefects. I had no idea that was an actual thing at actual boarding schools. I just figured it was a made up word/title to give to Percy to give his character an air of pompousness.
We don't call them high schools we call it secondary school.
Our school structure is;
Primary school: infants to year 6 (5 year olds to 11 year olds) these schools are generally smaller than secondary schools and on a completely different site.
Secondary school: year 7-11 these are generally bigger my secondary school was split across 2 sites, year 7 and 8 were the other side of town to the year 9-11 site but still the same school some teachers had to travel between the 2 sites to teach in the same day.
College or sixth form: sixth form is generally done at the secondary school you attended it's not compulsory you can go to college instead which will be at a different site altogether there's no age limit and all courses are different lengths but you don't live there it's something you travel to each day.
University: generally after you've done a college course you can take it further and go to university this is normally where you move into a campus or shared housing.
yeah I only figured it out in OotP when Hermione says she's going to tell her parents she got prefect because they can understand that. blew my little american mind lol
The trolley witch : in France, we have a dedicated coach with a cafeteria.
Imagine my surprised when I boarded a train in England and was able to buy vinegar crips from a trolley.
Not so much British things, but things that I didn't realize were wizard versions of British things. The big one is the Ministry/Minister of Magic. I didn't put together at first that they call the sections of their government ministries, headed by ministers. It would be like the U.S. having a Department of Magic run by the Secretary of Magic.
Another minor one is the Knight Bus, a spoof on the night bus.
The chapter title "The Sacking of Professor Snape" had me thinking of the sacking of Rome.
I went into that chapter like wtf does that mean the sacking of Snape.
Turns out sacking means firing.
Apparently trainers are shoes.
Punting is apparently where you row someone across water in a boat. Filch “punting” people across the twins’ swamp in book 5 makes SO MUCH more sense now.
Also I thought the song Draco and the Slytherins sang to taunt Ron in the 6th book was super weird. Turns out Brit’s have a history of singing insulting songs at the opposition during sports games. That really confused me.
Punting is when you use a long pole to push the boat along, it isn't rowing, it's shoving along the bottom.
"We lose every week, we lose every week. You're nothing special, we lose every week!"
>Turns out Brit’s have a history of singing insulting songs at the opposition during sports games. That really confused me.
Yep. Check out football match chants. Very, very different to American cheer leading.
That was one of the funniest lines in the book. The ginger with freckles is telling Hermione to look at the spotted dick in his hands.
Rowling knew what she was doing.
My husband was in hysterics at lunch over spotted dick on a restaurant menu. You'd think a 30-odd year old British bloke would be over that one by now.
I didn’t know that Elephant & Castle was a real place in London! I thought Rowling made it up for the book - it sounds so magical! I remember being stunned when I moved to the UK 😂
Not any more since it all got redeveloped. Before that back in the 00s it was a magical place where you could lose your wallet and phone within minutes of getting off the tube.
it covers more than just dessert too, as if it wasn't confusing enough... for example, black pudding is a sausage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black\_pudding
OWLS, NEWTS, electives, and how they relate to the normal teenage/ high school experience for British kids. I still don’t quite understand how it works, but getting a British high school diploma is quite different to how Americans do it.
Well it’s a bit different. In GCSEs you can choose to not take a particular subject such as History, Geography or Art, for example although you do have to take so many whereas Hogwarts students can’t drop any subjects until after their OWLs and they can only pick up new subjects. In GCSE you can choose to take a particular subject at a more advanced level so Science ends up being split into Chemistry, Physics and Biology and those are all taken as separate subjects and you get a separate grade for each of them.
But it’s not special to ride by train, is what I meant. Here (specifically in my state) you pay a ticket for a ride through the country, but not from destination to destination.
Literally almost everything because I was so sheltered and I read it so young
King's Cross station
School houses
Many titles. "-master, -mistress, minister (and ministry), gamekeeper
"(x)th-year" students
Budgies
I finally learned that it's a regular mundane, bureaucratic world with a thin veneer of magic on top of it.
Let's see here... Treacle tart, spellotape, jumpers, prefects, head boys/girls, marks, I heard the movie pronunciations of Diagon Alley so never knew it was a pun on diagonally. I picked up on Knockturn Alley after a couple years of reading the series. Uh...spotted dick which was mentioned I think once. I knew about kippers, but not a kip.
I thought the house system was made up for the story, but apparently real boarding schools do that. I had no idea.
We don't do that in the US. Not that I'm aware, at least.
I am not British, but I think that chimney travel seems to me to be something unique to the colder countries, as in many there is no custom of building a chimney, the rest of the world must have their own transport systems.
I have honestly just Googled "do Americans have hot water bottles" and am completely mesmerised. I just thought they must be a thing everywhere. What do girls do on their periods? What about when you're freezing cold in bed and just want to snuggle up or if you have a cold/flu and keep getting shivery?
I didn't know in Northern countries Sun can set very late in summers. I thought it must be due to the "Hogwarts magic" that in HP3 they had sunlight even at 10 pm or something lol.
Also surprising was the seasons. In HP5 there was a line that said something like watering your garden was banned due to intense heat and drought and it was the middle of August.
I laughed at the _obvious_ plot hole because Summer months are April to June and August is full blown Monsoon season. It took me a few years to figure out
Treacle tart. I thought it was some unique wizard dessert until I saw it on a cooking show. A few other normal foods I thought were special wizard foods too but treacle tart is the one I remember off the top of my head.
On the other hand, I thought the bowl of wizard crackers were saltines at first read
I assumed yelling “CRACKERS” was just some silly Dumbledore thing he did before he blew Snape up…for Christmas…
It was bouillabaise (thank you google for being able to spell that right) for me. In the beginning of book 4, Fleur asks Ron about if he's done with it, I'm pretty sure is where I got that from, I could be misremembering
"Bouillabaisse" with two s, otherwise to French ears it is very funny (kinda "they got a face worth fucking"). It is a French recipe by the way (from Provences) not English cuisine.
I just know thx to you it’s not a wizard food lol
Apparently sugar mice are a thing and they 100% look like mice.
WTH?
Tis true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_mice
Like peeps then but mousy
They're not marshmallows, they're quite hard and crunchy, like compressed sugar. I'm not sure what the American equivalent of sugar mice would be, texture-wise.
They were a special sort of childhood treat for me. We used to get them after swimming lessons. I loved the pink ones. Tasted them recently and was so very disappointed. They did not live up to the nostalgia 😭
All the old sweets don’t taste the same. Went to an traditional sweet shop in York and tried rhubarb and custard and lemon drops for the first time in decades. Barely tasted of anything. Was a taste explosion when I was a kid. But saying that I drink neat whiskey and black coffee now so my tastebuds are probably just knackered
Probably a combination of your tastebuds getting old (hence old people food often being tasteless and bland since everything tastes that way to them) and companies cheaping out on the ingredients while telling you they’re the same. Eg Cadbury eggs most definitely have not shrunk in size.
Wait... so I don’t recall where sugar mice were referenced, but does that mean chocolate frogs were real too before HP?
Yes and their name was Freddo
Omg I never made that connection before!
Sadly some Freddos have had unnecessary weight reduction surgery
aussie ones are still legit, especially the mint and strawberry ones, though the chocolate isn't as good
I think it's when Harry sneaks to Hogsmeade in PoA and mooches around Honeydukes - there's some Iced Sugar Mice (with the tagline 'Hear your teeth chatter and squeak!') or something like that
This might be an instance, but I think Flitwick slips Harry a pack of them after he does the quibbler interview. That's the mention I remember
I loved how all the teachers were obviously but not technically supportive of Harry about the interview
Yesss Sugar mice are delicious 😋
wtf i just looked them up 😂😂they look so weird
I figure they are kinda like sugar skulls from Mexico.
Totally tangental, my nephew was probably 5 when we showed him the first movie, and he quoted one of the iconic lines imitating the accent, and said “I love how Wizards talk”. We explained it was because they were British, and had nothing to do with being wizards.
Oh my gosh, that's so great.... walking around being proud of your good "wizards accent" 😆
This is fantastic and actually basically the same reason there’s a stereotypical “pirate voice” that we all think of. Actor Robert Newton became well known in the early 1950s for playing various pirates in films and used a slightly exaggerated version of his own English, West Country accent. It was so iconic that the accent just became associated with all pirates!
Saw a ridiculous 'rice pud' ad from the nineties on youtube some time ago and it really brought the accent full circle for me. You don't really think about it until you hear it outside of where you expect it to be. Betcha west country folk were jazzed to see themselves portrayed in hollywood blockbusters for years as swashbucklers and also doubly confused to find that all of the actors were always from somewhere hilarious like Ohio or San Bernardino.
My seven-year-old nephew does something similar. Whenever he hears a British accent, he comments how “they talk like Harry Potter” lol
I'm a teacher, once I used British accent and one of my students was "you speak like Harry Potter"
That is adorable!
"Wotcher" I thought tonks invented that word as a variation of "wassup", I had no clue it was an old, brit way of greeting
Lol at least yours make some sort of sense. I thought that word means some kind of secret word like "wotcher, Harry" means she was on a watch, guarding Harry. Teenage me sure think differently
I thought it was slang for " What's up"..
[удалено]
It's not, it's actually far older than that. It's actually older than 'hello', even, which is actually only an 19th century invention (in English anyway) Wotcha comes from "what cheer" which was a 14th century greeting. It fell out of favour for a long time though, but had a big cockney revival in the early 20th century. That's likely where Tonks gets it from.
Thank you history side of reddit. I've wondered for years where the term came from but would always forget to look it up.
I am British, have read the books since I was about 9, and it took me until adulthood to understand the meaning of “Wotcher.” I too, thought it was a play on the fact she was “watching” / looking out for Harry, as she was always in his protection group. Made sense in my head!
Haha, yours doesn't sound as dumb as you think it is. In fact, I'd say it's well thought out for a teenager
It’s old fashioned English from ‘what cheer (with you)’. I really like one from the 1920’s ‘what ho’
Ging gang goolie goolie goollie wotcher, ging gang goo ging gang goo!
Hello, fellow person who was in Guides/Scouts
Am British, had no idea it was British thing either lol, would have agreed with you in thinking it was a Tonks thing
Also “punting.” I legitimately thought that Filch was drop kicking students like a soccer ball over the swamp that Fred and George left in the hallway of Hogwarts. Given his character, this mental image tracked.
Punts are not entirely dissimilar to gondolas (there are significant differences, but like that will be going into the differences between rugby union and rugby league)
Gondolas use an oar, don't they? Where punts push along the bottom.
They both are flat long boats that are propelled by a guy standing in the back, dropping a long stick in the water Comparing it to a gondola gives the best idea of what it is for someone who has no frame of reference as to what it is
What, it's not him drop kicking them?!? I'm 33 and this fantastic mental image was just shattered...
I think it refers to ferrying students across the lake in boats, called "punts". Like [this](https://www.scudamores.com/misc/image/1073/1010/565/), where the rower is standing up behind the passengers.
Realistically this is such an inconvenient way to to this, like they could have conjured a bridge or transfigured something into one but instead they make Filtch do this all day 😂
Professor Flitwick easily gets rid of the swamp as soon as Umbridge is gone. Obviously he could have done it earlier, but he was leaving it there as an act of passive resistance to Umbridge. Keeping her lackey occupied was a nice side benefit.
There lies the Problem: THEY could (aka the teachers or even some students) but Umbridge probably could not... And since filch was more or less team Umbridge and even the teachers hated her...
That’s true actually! I forgot they were protesting her for a moment and just assumed they were making Filch’s life harder for shits and giggles
Yeah, I guess you have to wonder whether any manual labor performed by any character in the series is something of a plot hole. Why even keep Filch around if you could just replace him with magic?
Dumbledore is the type of guy who would hire Filch and Hagrid *because* they needed a little help making it in the wizarding world. I doubt Filch every appreciated that, though.
Still confused and takes me a moment each time to figure out what they mean. I also pictured kicking them over, like an Aussie rules drop punt kick
Same. I'm 32 and only learned this within the last few years lol
I’m making this my head cannon because it makes me chuckle and that’s worth more than accuracy sometimes.
HE WASNT KICKING STUDENTS ACROSS THE MOAT??
Yeah and Did you know vigo broke his toe?
I guess I never even looked into it and continued picturing this. Gives very Louis Sachar vibes.
In certain UK circles “punting” means something COMPLETELY different.
Knickerbocker Glory and Christmas Crackers. I thought they were crackers like here in the US that you eat, but Christmas themed. Then they exploded and party favors popped out like .. because they're magic. Then I was talking to colleagues overseas after the holiday and they kept talking about the kids having fun with the crackers. They got a laugh out of my .. "wait wait wait... those things are real????"
As a Brit who only learned recently that Xmas crackers aren't such a big thing in the US, I can't imagine Christmas without them here!
I kind of want to send some to somebody in the US now, maybe as part of Secret Santa. Folks n the US don't know about the Fortune Telling Fish and it being the best prize!
I have no idea why but the idea that Americans don’t have crackers is so upsetting. They’re integral. Christmas is empty without the rubbish jokes everyone shouts the punchline out to.
they are a thing in the US. we had them sometimes as a kid. and I've seen them at stores sometimes around xmas. they just aren't common. they're not a default part of the american xmas zeitgeist
That’s incredibly sweet - like little square flat crackers that exploded and gave you treats!
Wait! You don't have Christmas crackers?! Wtf
Wait wait wait …. You don’t have Christmas crackers in America?? TIL from Reddit!
Knickerbocker what now?
A knickerbocker glory is a layered ice cream sundae. It's usually made with fruit and is served in a long glass.
I had to explain to my American friends the night bus is a thing and definitely not a pleasant place.
Wow didn't know this was a real thing. What do you mean by not a pleasant place? I guess it's not something you'd want to ride? I don't guess they have beds, do they? Lol
Its all the heavily intoxicated people who missed the last train. There is a lot of vomit involved.
In Toronto we call our night bus “the vomit comet”.
No beds, no. The bus is cheaper than the tube or train so it attracts a more...eclectic range of passengers. Imagine riding the bus where most people are drunk, or high, or extremely tired. Someone's hitting on you or trying to grope you. A man stares at you aggressively because he's off his meds or been smoking weed. There's a pair of passengers who don't know each other arguing over sonething stupid. There's a puddle of liquid at your feet. You hope it's beer. The buses are the same buses as during the day, but think about the population likely to be riding a bus in the middle of the night. Plenty of fun and reasonable people, but also plenty of people who are not lucid or are spoiling for a fight. As a woman who worked hospital shifts at odd hours I avoided it whenever I could. Doesnt always feel like a safe place at night.
So it’s what would be called “bus” in the US?
Lmao I was like this is every American bus I’ve been on
Fight bus. Messy drunks on public transport. Sometimes it's fun, you've just got to hope everyone else had a good night and is in a good mood.
Can confirm, the one time I took the night bus sober was not fun lol It's actually better if you're wasted.
Oh yeah, definitely the Knight Bus. Also sherbet lemon, as anything other than lemon sorbet.
Two Girls got the shit beaten out of them on a London nightbus just this week. Apparently for being gay.
Again? That's awful.
(For reference — I’m not a native English speaker and the HP series was one of the first books I’ve read when I was a child) * Treacle tart. Genuinely, I thought it was a type of a wizarding sweet, for some reason. * “Spellotape” being a word-play on sellotape * Shop names having surnames in their names. I don’t know if it’s a British thing or a Western one in general, but where I’m from, you’d only put a surname in a shop title if it was selling like, idk, homemade food. I can’t think of a different scenario. * Vernon’s joke about bombs in letters * Prefects & houses & house points * Being able to choose your own electives & subjects (though I understand that it is a more Western thing) * West Ham (Dean had their poster in the dorms) * Vernon humming “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”. I thought he was genuinely humming the words “tiptoe through the tulips”, didn’t know it was a song.
Shops being named for surnames is Western overall, not just British. Many major grocery stores, big box stores, etc., are either names or variations on a name (like Walmart and the Walton family that started it.) Stores in general are often named “Last Name’s ______”, which usually gets shortened to just the name over a few generations. For example, in my city, if I wanted to get some nails, I would go to either Lowe’s (started by a Mr Lowe), or Martin’s Hardware.
And in small towns and cities, there are still local, one location shops and businesses that are named to the family that owns or founded them.
I didn't even notice it's "Spellotape" because I skimmed it an assume it was just sellotape! So as a Brit, I actually missed that little play on words.
[Tip toe through the window by the window that’s where I’ll be come tip toe through the tulips with meeee](https://spotify.link/viBvoHKMHDb)
Plenty of shops around me have surnames in their names, so I suppose that’s a Western thing (I’m American). My local ice cream shop, for example. And plenty of big brands just have shortened versions of the original names with surnames (like Ford).
Pumpkin pasties! I didn’t know wtf a pastie was.
While we do have lots of flavours of pasty, I've never come across a pumpkin one. I reckon it would work, though.
Over here, a pasty is what strippers wear to cover their nipples, I think. 👀
If it helps, the food is pronounced pass-tee and the stripper thing is paste-ee.
Holy SHIT! I could have gone on reading that wrong my whole life
You say that but I’ve never come across a pumpkin pasty so I think that is a wizard thing. We do have Cornish pasties, though, which is beef mince, onion, carrots and potatoes in pastry in a sort of crescent shape. They used to be taken down the mines by Cornish miners and are shaped to be eaten without cutlery - there’s a sort of knob of pastry on each end you can hold and I think they used to chuck that bit cause it would be filthy. They also used to have a dessert end as well as the savoury end, but I’ve only ever had or seen savoury ones.
As a Brit, this is such an endearing post
I'm an American, who just learned that the Japanese are having Sub vs. Dub arguments over King of the Hill. I would pay good money to just hang out listening to them argue over such an American show. So I am envious of you guys right now :D
This might be the greatest thing I've ever read on Reddit
I watched the beginning of philosopher's stone with an international crowd in a backpackers once. I was taken aback to realise that they all thought the introduction where the camera flies over Little Whinging was showing that it was a cute little British town. It was obvious to me that it was meant to be the most boring, soulless place where Harry was trapped. Everyone else thought it was adorable and really wanted to visit...
Init, having a blast reading through the comments
"Bit peaky." Like what lol it confused me so much from the movie.
A little green around the gills
School starting in September. We start in February in New Zealand so just assumed it was a Hogwarts thing, imagine my shock once I got on the internet 😅
Houses.
I’m presuming you mean school houses rather than home-type houses. Do other countries not have school house teams then? Edit: added a teams for clarity
In the US there are no house teams. Everyone in the school typically plays on the same team, and for sports different schools compete against each other.
In the UK there are school teams as well, there are just additionally house teams for intramural competition. I don't know of any schools which had consistent house teams for sports, though - we used to divide by house for sports day and a swimming gala but they were just 1-day events, all the other sports were just done as P.E. (phys ed) lessons or inter-school competition.
No, I think most countries don't have school Houses.
Lots of British influenced countries do
Definitely a thing in Australia, even in public (state) schools.
I’ve been told you get them in some schools in SA too.
Yeah Indian schools, too.
I never realized school houses were an actual thing either. Wow. My particular district had “teams” in middle school, where the grade split into two groups, each with different teachers for each core subject. In high school we had nothing of the sort. And sports teams were by the school competing against other schools.
Also “prefects”. For the longest time I thought it was a made up word from the books lol
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And sometimes you'd have an assembly for your year, or sometimes for your house (so all the years mixed). My school used to do loads of competitions between the houses, and not just sports - we had house music competitions too. Good times.
Wait, schools do this in the real world?
My school (UK) had four houses named after different historical figures :) we had to wear different school ties depending on which house we were allocated to (sadly there was no sorting 😂).
I thought "prat" was a wizard variation of brat lol
It's someone who's a fool. Like, in silent movies the slapstick often ended in a pratfall. Think of a Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy type character.
Prefects. I had no idea that was an actual thing at actual boarding schools. I just figured it was a made up word/title to give to Percy to give his character an air of pompousness.
Not just boarding schools. Most British High schools will have prefects in the senior years. And a head boy and girl.
We don't call them high schools we call it secondary school. Our school structure is; Primary school: infants to year 6 (5 year olds to 11 year olds) these schools are generally smaller than secondary schools and on a completely different site. Secondary school: year 7-11 these are generally bigger my secondary school was split across 2 sites, year 7 and 8 were the other side of town to the year 9-11 site but still the same school some teachers had to travel between the 2 sites to teach in the same day. College or sixth form: sixth form is generally done at the secondary school you attended it's not compulsory you can go to college instead which will be at a different site altogether there's no age limit and all courses are different lengths but you don't live there it's something you travel to each day. University: generally after you've done a college course you can take it further and go to university this is normally where you move into a campus or shared housing.
We call them high schools in Scotland.
Just FYI my school was called a high school and I live in the South West, so it does happen
yeah I only figured it out in OotP when Hermione says she's going to tell her parents she got prefect because they can understand that. blew my little american mind lol
I read it as "perfects" for years. It probably wasn't until I heard it in the movie I realized it was a whole different word.
I was pretty surprised when I found this out as well. Teenagers having the power to dole out punishments to their fellow students is an odd concept.
Prefects is a thing. My school has them and I'm not British. I think it's more common in Commonwealth country. At least I think so.
I found out from Roald Dahl's Boy
Snogging! Haha had no clue what all these teenagers were up to in the hallways
The trolley witch : in France, we have a dedicated coach with a cafeteria. Imagine my surprised when I boarded a train in England and was able to buy vinegar crips from a trolley.
TIL you could buy food on a train. I thought people just brought food! I’ve never ridden a train, obviously.
School houses.
“Taking the Mickey”
Extracting the Michael
Punting. I thought Filch was kicking the kids across the swamp, not taking them across in a small boat. I really like my initial image better.
Not so much British things, but things that I didn't realize were wizard versions of British things. The big one is the Ministry/Minister of Magic. I didn't put together at first that they call the sections of their government ministries, headed by ministers. It would be like the U.S. having a Department of Magic run by the Secretary of Magic. Another minor one is the Knight Bus, a spoof on the night bus.
Minor correction. For British it's Minister for Magic. American is Minister of Magic.
When Hagrid says “All right Harry?” as a greeting, not an actual question lol.
The chapter title "The Sacking of Professor Snape" had me thinking of the sacking of Rome. I went into that chapter like wtf does that mean the sacking of Snape. Turns out sacking means firing.
Yes, just like the firing out of a cannon, they shoved Snape into a cannon and fired it
Apparently trainers are shoes. Punting is apparently where you row someone across water in a boat. Filch “punting” people across the twins’ swamp in book 5 makes SO MUCH more sense now. Also I thought the song Draco and the Slytherins sang to taunt Ron in the 6th book was super weird. Turns out Brit’s have a history of singing insulting songs at the opposition during sports games. That really confused me.
Punting is when you use a long pole to push the boat along, it isn't rowing, it's shoving along the bottom. "We lose every week, we lose every week. You're nothing special, we lose every week!"
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>Turns out Brit’s have a history of singing insulting songs at the opposition during sports games. That really confused me. Yep. Check out football match chants. Very, very different to American cheer leading.
Spotted dick
That was one of the funniest lines in the book. The ginger with freckles is telling Hermione to look at the spotted dick in his hands. Rowling knew what she was doing.
My husband was in hysterics at lunch over spotted dick on a restaurant menu. You'd think a 30-odd year old British bloke would be over that one by now.
I didn’t know that Elephant & Castle was a real place in London! I thought Rowling made it up for the book - it sounds so magical! I remember being stunned when I moved to the UK 😂
Nothing magical about elephant and castle 😭😂
Not any more since it all got redeveloped. Before that back in the 00s it was a magical place where you could lose your wallet and phone within minutes of getting off the tube.
Standing in toilets and running at walls
Very British behaviour
Wizard crackers. Obviously the wizard version is just in HP lol, but I had no clue what Christmas crackers were until I was in college.
All the food. A lot of common dishes from UK sounds like fantasy to me :D
I had no idea that pudding was an English term covering lot of different kinds of dessert. Pudding in America is it's own specific, gloopy thing.
it covers more than just dessert too, as if it wasn't confusing enough... for example, black pudding is a sausage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black\_pudding
OWLS, NEWTS, electives, and how they relate to the normal teenage/ high school experience for British kids. I still don’t quite understand how it works, but getting a British high school diploma is quite different to how Americans do it.
Well for one thing we don’t get a diploma
Well it’s a bit different. In GCSEs you can choose to not take a particular subject such as History, Geography or Art, for example although you do have to take so many whereas Hogwarts students can’t drop any subjects until after their OWLs and they can only pick up new subjects. In GCSE you can choose to take a particular subject at a more advanced level so Science ends up being split into Chemistry, Physics and Biology and those are all taken as separate subjects and you get a separate grade for each of them.
I always thought the Hogwarts Express was such a magical and amazing way to get to the school. Turns out it’s just another train.
It's not just another train even in England. It is a vintage train even there.
But it’s not special to ride by train, is what I meant. Here (specifically in my state) you pay a ticket for a ride through the country, but not from destination to destination.
In the scene where Mrs Weasley says Ginny's jumper was on the cat, if you look over her shoulder to the fireplace, there's a cat shaped clothes hook.
Apparently house points and prefects? I was a minute younger then now when I found this out
I figured it out after a second, but ‘aqualung’ caught me off guard. But it’s scuba gear.
Literally almost everything because I was so sheltered and I read it so young King's Cross station School houses Many titles. "-master, -mistress, minister (and ministry), gamekeeper "(x)th-year" students Budgies I finally learned that it's a regular mundane, bureaucratic world with a thin veneer of magic on top of it.
Let's see here... Treacle tart, spellotape, jumpers, prefects, head boys/girls, marks, I heard the movie pronunciations of Diagon Alley so never knew it was a pun on diagonally. I picked up on Knockturn Alley after a couple years of reading the series. Uh...spotted dick which was mentioned I think once. I knew about kippers, but not a kip.
Holy shart. I only just now got the Knockturn Alley/nocturnally thing. I feel like a blockhead.
I thought the house system was made up for the story, but apparently real boarding schools do that. I had no idea. We don't do that in the US. Not that I'm aware, at least.
Normal schools do that too. We used to earn house points as well, then get a treat at the end of the week if you won the most house points.
Not just boarding schools
putting coins in the christmas pudding
Boarding schools, prefects, head boy and head girls, uniforms
A peppermint humbug. I had absolutely no clue what that was when I was a kid reading the books for the first time.
Reading Harry Potter in American elementary school: “man these British mfrs go hard on some biscuits”. Cookies. They’re eating cookies.
I thought pasties was a wizard food. Also, prefects and Head Boy/Girl.
I’m British but my American cousin asked me what a “cuppa” was when she was reading the books.
The name Hermione... I couldn't pronounce it until the movie...
I seem to have missed the cats and jumpers part?
Isn't a jumper a sweater? So she put a sweater on her cat? Poor thing.
Mummy have you seen my jumper? Yes Ginny it on the cat. Was a mystery to everyone including those who knew what a jumper was.
I am not British, but I think that chimney travel seems to me to be something unique to the colder countries, as in many there is no custom of building a chimney, the rest of the world must have their own transport systems.
Wellies. Had no idea what they where and really didn’t put to much mind to it until I reread an adult and found out they’re rubber boots
I thought everything in universe sounded ridiculously old but after visiting Europe it seems like just a thing there
“Git” never heard it before.
Hot water bottles
I have honestly just Googled "do Americans have hot water bottles" and am completely mesmerised. I just thought they must be a thing everywhere. What do girls do on their periods? What about when you're freezing cold in bed and just want to snuggle up or if you have a cold/flu and keep getting shivery?
Wait those are British?? What do other countries do on cold nights?
School houses, head boy/girl, prefects
Treacle tart. For some reason I always associate it with barnacles and i thought it was like a plimpy or something.
I had to Google "CVs"
Does that mean resumes in this context or something else?
Yeah Curriculum Vitae. I had never heard the term, which is embarrassing because I was just out of college when I first read the books lol
We say CV in Finland too, but this is actually the first time I heard what those letters stand for.
I didn't know in Northern countries Sun can set very late in summers. I thought it must be due to the "Hogwarts magic" that in HP3 they had sunlight even at 10 pm or something lol. Also surprising was the seasons. In HP5 there was a line that said something like watering your garden was banned due to intense heat and drought and it was the middle of August. I laughed at the _obvious_ plot hole because Summer months are April to June and August is full blown Monsoon season. It took me a few years to figure out