Wouldn't Lord Voldemort have trouble pronouncing spells given that he has a disfigured nose?

 

News Flash: The Tongue and throat are used for pronunciation and enunciation, the nose helps bring in air, only problematic if it's blocked.

EDIT: why would you even think of this?

 

Possibly because when you have a cold, you sometimes have trouble pronouncing some letters (the only one I can think of is 'm').

On the other hand, haven't we seen Voldemort silently cast before?

EDIT

Also, I started this thread a while back about accents in spell casting, although it doesn't directly answer the question, it might be able to help.

And back on track - if Seamus (assuming he has a strong Irish accent), McGonagall (presumably Scottish), and I bet there's at least one scouser in Hogwarts, can all cast the same spells, then I see no reason why not having a nose would ever hold you back.

Unless you cast one of those spells than an author makes up, with an incantation that is the literal translation of 'hammer of God to smite my foes'.

 

Despite Hermione's whole 'it's LeviOOOOsa not LevioSAAAA' spiel, I gathered from canon that proper incantations don't really matter. The existence of non-verbal casting indicates that incantations are only really needed to help a caster visualize and categorize the intended magical effect. Also, logically, there have to be multiple incantations for the same spell. A Chinese wizard isn't going to be saying 'Stupefy!' (a latin derivation) to cast the stunning spell. He'll either be using the chinese equivalent or be casting non-verbally.

Ol' Voldie could probably shout 'DRIVELING PIG ANUS!' and still cast the killing curse effectively.

 

and yet Non-verbal casting is performed by...saying the word in your head. It still seems like the incantation matters.

 

That's only from Harry's point of view. And Harry is a dumbass. It's highly probable that he says the spell in his head to picture the intended effect. It's the intent that's important. We all know that magic is supposed to be a tool of willpower. You have to mean/want the magic to happen. You can say 'Avada Kedavra' without the proper intent and nothing will happen.

 

I dare you to find the word "intent" in the Harry Potter books.

 

I dare you to find a consistent explanation for how incantations work.

 

There are words that make things happen. Done.

 

Yes, very good, but that totally ignores the legitimate questions raised by this thread.

 

The scene with polyjuiced!Moody talking about the Killing Curse and nosebleeds in GoF lends credence to the theory that intent/willpower is important (even if those words aren't explicitly mentioned). There's also the 3 D's of Apparation: Destination, Determination, and Deliberation.

 

We'd all like for the HP canon magic to make some sort of sense, but seeing as how everything from common sense to the Laws of Nature get blown to smithereens upon contact with canon, I think it's safe to say the incantation *does* matter.

First book, Flitwick refers to getting the incantation right, and waxes on about how some dumbass pronounced a wrong letter and ended up with a rhino on his chest or some such.

Sixth book, Harry almost bisects Malfoy with the incantation of a spell he knew almost nothing about*, after hoisting Ron into the air with a different unknown spell.

On the other hand, Neville couldn't cast spells correctly in the DoM because of his broken nose, not to mention the canon lowering of that purple spell's power because of Dolohov being Silenced.

Sixth book, again: Everyone, even Hermione, has trouble with silent spell-casting, and we're talking about saying it in your head, not going so far as to just imagine a spell's effect.

*Oh, and it's shown how even SNAPE, a bona fide BAMF, had to get the spell incantation just right to get the effect he wanted. As much as I'd like for there to be a Dresden-esque logic to it, that just ain't the case.

So yeah, the incantation sounds pretty damn important to me.

 

Besides what I mentioned above, there's also stuff like the Patronus where shouting the incantation won't do a thing unless you are able to focus on an appropriate memory. Fiendfyre can't be controlled if all you know is the incantation. The Imperius Curse requires willpower to successfully dominate another's mind. Suffice it to say that while incantations may be important, they are clearly not everything.

 

Those spells appear to be exceptions to the rule, rather than normal. Also, IIRC, Harry's use of the Imperius in DH involved no kind of mental struggle. In fact, when you take the Patronus, Fiendfyre and the Cruciatus, this encompasses every single spell we know of that involves a mental component. And the Cruciatus is dubious at that.

Well, you need to want to perform magic for magic to happen, if that's what you mean. I don't think we've ever seen a case of a wizard accidentally casting a spell by saying an incantation without meaning to cast it. However, what we have seen and know happens is that wizards can accidentally cast the wrong spell by messing up the incantation, whatever effects they intend to occur.

The idea that magic requires the decision to do magic (with the exception of accidental magic) is a very different notion to the idea that the core component of a spell is desiring its effects and that everything else is superfluous (aka "it's all about intent" aka "if you want something really hard then it'll happen").

 

I don't disagree. Certainly the willpower and intellect and experience of the caster plays a HUGE role. It's just that as we're shown in canon, any spell without the incantation is just accidental magic.

The reverse is not true, as shown in the examples of Levicorpus and Sectumsempra - hell, even Serpensortia in CoS - as some spells just work when the incantation is spoken, regardless of foreknowledge of the spell's purpose or effect. The Patronus, the Imperius and the Summoning spells are altogether different, but nowhere in any HP book I've seen has anyone done intentional, focused magic on intent alone, in the absence of the incantation.

It's a shortcoming of the HP universe, but there you have it.

 

This, my devil's advocate response, is fairly flimsy because we don't actually see it happen but:

That would probably be the closest we get to intent based magic without incantation. I also got the impression from his demands to Dumbledore to "prove it" that he was able to urge people to act, but it's not quite as clear.

 

As is so often the case with Voldemort, he is the exception which proves the rule.

Nobody ever made more'n one Horcrux, you say? 'M on it.

Nobody's ever flown without a broom? Dibs.

Don't wanna hire me as the Defense prof? Get a load of this curse on the job, Dumbles.

Chamber of Secrets is a myth, eh? We'll see about that.

Not to mention Tom's hijinks at the orphanage (rabbit, scarred kids, etc.)

So yeah, when Dumbledore talks about Tom being a prodigy and all-around wunderkind, old Albus ain't jokin'.

 

So what you mean, Portus, is...

 

But it does, if you run with it, put it within the limits of magic for someone to perform intent based magic without an incantation. So while Voldemort might be very talented in this case, the magic is still just what anyone of similar skill could do.

 

Perhaps we should just agree that there are inconsistencies everywhere and that proper wand movements/incantations, while not entirely necessary to perform magic, help create a honed effect.

Shame on JKR for not expounding upon Arithmancy, spell creation, and the basics of magical theory.