Independent Business Weekly discusses how

Independent Business Weekly discusses how Potter-speak is taking over the world of business.

A strange phenomenon is spreading across the business world. Corporates are taking over Potter-speak, a dialect spawned by J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books about the trials and tribulations of a young wizard.

Microsoft has dubbed its less creative British staff “muggles” – the wizard word for non-wizards (or mere mortals like us). London pub talk centres on office creeps nicknamed Draco Malfoy, after Potter’s schoolboy arch-enemy. German industrial giants Bosch and Siemens have taken the terms to heart.

Siemens’ UK staff branded one project, during a routine development meeting, “one for the Dementors” (the less-than-human wizard prison guards) because of the scary costs involved. According to other press reports Bosch has adopted the term “Platform nine-and-three-quarters” – the magical train platform used to take Harry and his chums to Hogwarts school for “projects of vision.” The British public rated “quidditch,” the main wizard sport, like volleyball on broomsticks, second favourite word.

Rowling’s was only narrowly beaten by George W Bush in Time Magazine’s Person of the Year stakes. How long her popularity soars may depend on the outcome of her current New York court fight over copyright of the term “muggle” – now worth a fortune. Although Rowling has hooked many a young Kiwi (and a few older ones), New Zealand workplaces seem as yet immune to this phenomenon.

Those about the scuttlebutt await the first employment court brought by someone complaining “they called me a muggle.”