Okay, now this has probably been mentioned before, but I love the idea of James Potter’s family being Bengali.
The UK has a large Indian community, particularly in and around London, Birmingham, and Manchester. However, a lot of people who moved from India to the UK changed their names to sound more “British”, so that they wouldn’t be as discriminated. So it would be totally legitimate for the Poddar family of Kolkata to have moved to London and changed their surname to Potter.
Imagine how wonderful it would have been for Sirius to have gone from this very strict, white, traditional family, the kind that eats at opposite ends of long tables, with many different sets of fine silver cutlery, to the Potters’ loud, colourful house, where Mrs Potter would be singing along to Hum Tum Ek Kamre and Inhi Logo Ne while making chor chori. He would get to eat it with his hands, and sit close enough to everyone to talk and laugh. And how wonderful would it be the first time Sirius celebrates Holi and Diwali with them. They would even take him to Kolkata with them for Durga Puja, where they’d go pandal hopping, and Sirius would think it was more magical than anything his pureblood family had ever shown him.
The longer he lived with them, the more Sirius gets why James loves the Gryffindor colours so much. Red is prosperity, the eternal colour, gold is good fortune, a symbol of Lakshmi. Being a Gryffindor, for James, was a sign of good things to come. And you can just imagine how he would feel seeing the girl he has a crush on wearing red and gold … totally ignoring the fact that every other Gryffindor girl would also be wearing red and gold, he would declare it to Sirius as a sign that they were meant to be.
And the reason Vernon hated James so much was that he was horrifically racist. Not believing that a brownie could get a decent job. He used racial slurs and referenced “the colonies” during that fateful dinner, and James wouldn’t have been as used to the racial abuse due to the prejudices in the Wizarding world being different, so nearly hexed him when he dared insult his heritage, and that was the reason they never tried having dinner again.
“James Potter is a good English name. He is not English.”
“Actually, I’m from Hounslow.”
Then, after James and Lily’s deaths Sirius would wear nothing but white, and refused to let anyone help carry their bodies out. He was the one who washed and dressed James, as the only real family he had left, and made sure he was cremated properly, and his ashes scattered appropriately.
This is why my James headcanon is always Indian. It just makes sense. I also feel like the Potters not being white would be a reason for why the other pureblood families would look down on them a bit.
My only objection to this is that he wouldn’t be a Bengali. Poddar is typically a Marwari name. He could still be a Calcuttan!! Kolkata has a huge Marwari population, and typically big/middle businesses tend to be run by Marwaris so that might be one more reason why other purebloods would look askance at the Potters, because they made their money from business and trade and weren’t respectably unemployed.
Yo! Thanks for that correction, I had no idea!
That’s a really cool facet though, and one very in keeping with British traditional prejudices, i.e. Old Money versus New Money. Even if race wasn’t a thing, the New Money Potters would definitely be disdained by the other Old Money Purebloods. Working for a living? How dare they!
can everyone plz wish my parents a safe flight tomorrow morning to the isle of man cos my dad’s ban from visiting the island has been lifted finally after 40 all cos he fired a bottle rocket at the queen of england when he was a teenager
since i’ve gotten some intrigued asks here’s the story:
when my dad was 15 he went with his scout troop to a scouting jamboree on the isle of man where he and his friends decided to set off bottle rockets in the park cos idk they were dumb boys. and one of the bottle rockets went careening off into the road where it exploded right beside a car
now, in what year was my dad 15? 1977. the queen of england’s silver jubilee year. and what was the car my dad’s bottle rocket hit? the queen’s car in the cavalcade during her jubilee visit to the isle of man
throw in the fact my dad is irish and the 70s were the height of the troubles between the republic and britain and WHAM BAM THANK YA MAM! my dad got hit with a lifelong ban from ever visiting the isle of man and he and the whole scout troop were sent home
idk who decided to let him off for good behaviour after 40 years but when he got the letter in 2017 saying he could visit the isle of man again after jan 1 2018, my dad burst into the room on my stepmom and i and announced, “WE’RE GOING TO THE CHANNEL ISLANDS!”
shout out to the anon who just messaged me “that means somewhere out in the multiverse there’s a universe where your dad murdered the queen of england” which i’m never posting and just keeping in my inbox forever thank you that’s lovely and yes that’s exactly the response i wanted this to get
I don’t even know. It’s from a book about languages my friend’s been reading. (it’s creepy that I can understand it …)
It was actually invented with that purpose: anyone who spoke any European language should be able to understand esperanto. It was meant to be a lingua franca.
STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING Y’ALL AND TELL ME IF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS
I,understand about a half of it, I speak some dutch
“What Happened? Did your computer catch a virus? Did you suddenly develop BSE [mad cow disease]?”
Between German, English, Latin, a bit of French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian that was actually pretty readable to me.
I speak English and a very little spanish, and I can read it.
Speak English, know some Spanish and German. I could read this without much hassle and now I’m in awe.
So this is basically this is the equivilent of common
This is fuckin with me like,,, what if this is future basic in the trek universe.
I speak some French and Spanish (and a little Latin). I understood like 90 percent of this.
My first language is English, I know a few scattered words in Spanish, French, and German. Stumbled a couple times, but the meaning is clear!
This is cool as long as the EU doesn’t enforce and mandate it as “Globish”.
This is super cool; with my English, high school Quebecois, and a little German from my dad, I can understand virtually the entire thing!
It’s not Esperanto, though; it’s Europanto. Esperanto (a made-up language) was, I believe, designed to be easily learned; there are no weird rule violations or what.
Europanto, though, is designed to take advantage of Europe’s shared linguistic heritage, in such a way that you don’t *have* to learn it; as the book says, if you can read any one of those European languages, and maybe have a smattering of some of the most common words of any of the others, you ought to be able to follow along, almost instinctively. Which is rad as fuck.
this is amazing and if this is the future, I am 100% on board
