Never mind staffing ratios, what about language? Let's assume for the poor teachers' sakes that the other schools have appropriate faculty sizes. If you have one school taking students from--let's say--most of eastern Europe and Scandinavia, what language are classes in? Ditto Beaubatons if they're taking Spanish and Portuguese as well as French students.
I'd bet Latin is still a living (second) language for most Continental wizards. Perhaps students at the Asian schools (there has to be more than one) speak Sanskrit and write with classical Chinese characters? Arabic and Swahili maybe for their relevant regions?
I would love if there were a wizarding creole somewhere. Given that with wizarding travel methods Paris and Naples might as well be just down the street from each other, there ought to be even more mingling than Muggles with our trains and planes manage--and more importantly, since Floo powder is centuries old, it should have been going on far longer than Muggles have been zipping around at high speeds. At least if I were a magical merchant in 1500 and had made a cross-continent trip once, I'd be willing to put a lot of resources into building a humongous fireplace or inventing a special industrial Portkey to transport goods back. (Can you Portkey or side-along a wagon full of spices?) Even if that doesn't work, since Seclusion the small marriage market in any given region would provide some motivation to stay in touch. Maybe on the Continent these days an Italian pureblood is a more desirable match than a French halfblood, if you're French. Add in a multinational, multilingual student body being locked up together with no Muggle contact for most of the year and there ought to be at least a bit of linguistic difference from the Muggle neighbors.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-02-25 04:55 am (UTC)I'd bet Latin is still a living (second) language for most Continental wizards. Perhaps students at the Asian schools (there has to be more than one) speak Sanskrit and write with classical Chinese characters? Arabic and Swahili maybe for their relevant regions?
I would love if there were a wizarding creole somewhere. Given that with wizarding travel methods Paris and Naples might as well be just down the street from each other, there ought to be even more mingling than Muggles with our trains and planes manage--and more importantly, since Floo powder is centuries old, it should have been going on far longer than Muggles have been zipping around at high speeds. At least if I were a magical merchant in 1500 and had made a cross-continent trip once, I'd be willing to put a lot of resources into building a humongous fireplace or inventing a special industrial Portkey to transport goods back. (Can you Portkey or side-along a wagon full of spices?) Even if that doesn't work, since Seclusion the small marriage market in any given region would provide some motivation to stay in touch. Maybe on the Continent these days an Italian pureblood is a more desirable match than a French halfblood, if you're French. Add in a multinational, multilingual student body being locked up together with no Muggle contact for most of the year and there ought to be at least a bit of linguistic difference from the Muggle neighbors.