The Centre for Language and Linguistics will be welcoming Professor Francis Nolan from the University of Cambridge to the University of Kent next week for a special talk on the development first on Parseltongue – the fictional language of serpents from the world of Harry Potter.
The talk is co-hosted with two Kent Union societies, ELLSoc and Kent Hogwarts Society, with the title ‘Parseltongue: An Application of Linguistics’. No samples of the language are offered in the books, and so when the producer of the second Harry Potter film, The Chamber of Secrets, decided to include a scene with Parseltongue he needed the language to be created. Professor Nolan contributed to the design, and will discuss the creation of Parseltongue, including what the rationale was for adopting particular phonetic features (such as taking into consideration serpent mouth movements). The talk will be at 2pm on Wednesday 9 December 2015 in Elliot Lecture Theatre 2.
Professor Nolan will also give a second talk entitled ‘The Acoustics of Soprano Unintelligibility’ at 5pm the same day in Darwin Lecture Theatre 2.
For full details of Centre for Language and Linguistic events, please see the page here:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/cll/events