Parla Inglese?

[blamebrampton]

frantic_mice  pushed me in the direction of fanficrants  (which I can see lasting another week on my watch list, if that). One of the more interesting of the many rants was from someone who, in essence, said 'Look, we live in a globalised age, is it really the case that reading American spellings in a fic set in the UK and vice-versa is worth making that much of a fuss about?'

And I have to agree. I can easily overlook gotten and alright if  no one over the age of 20 cries and if people only talk about their deepest feelings when they are in extremis. But for some, including a long list of commenters, there are certain Americanisms that are like a dictionary to the 43rd President of the USA and have them running at first sight.

I can somewhat sympathise, because I can find it very hard to read when characters start acting American, talking at great length about their emotions and so on. While I adore my American friends, my closest ones know that they will receive one brief hug on meeting and departure, and I will probably never tell them any of my deepest feelings. Which is not because I don't love them, but because deepest feelings are only for personal perusal so that no innocent souls will become aware of the full extent of my inner lunacy.

But for spelling and so on ... well, I regularly read books and magazines published in America and sometimes set in the UK or elsewhere in the English speaking world, and I cope with them. In fact, the YA novel I just finished changed spellings depending on whether scenes were set in New York or Sydney and it read as very very odd indeed (though it's a good novel). Dealing with such spelling anomalies is commonplace: most of you do the same.

I do like a good Britpick for things like truck/lorry, stall/cubicle, Christmas eggnog/three bottles of decent whisky and hiding in the stables, and were I writing fic set in the US, I would make certain that my characters said Dude and asked for the check. However, my authorial voice would still sound like me, which I believe is appropriate. Wodehouse and Conan Doyle both have long sections of novels (Psmith, Journalist and The Valley of Fear respectively) set in the US where they follow this rule, and these were great successes on both sides of the Atlantic.

All of which is my lengthy way of saying, I can cope perfectly well if you're an American and you write alright, color and aluminum. But if you could hold off on having the lads say 'I love you so much, sweetie, that sometimes I just want to cry'*, I would take it as a personal favour.
 

Finally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY suonguyen !


*If you have actually written a fic that contains this line, obviously it worked well in the incredibly clever context you created for it.

Comments

[suonguyen.livejournal.com]

LOL thanks for the birthday wish! Oh and I like the sound of that community.

[aldehyde.livejournal.com]

i like this post a lot. generally, i don't have anything against seeing minor americanisms in hp fic - if it's a well-written story, i'm probably going to like it. however, chances are i'd enjoy it much more if it was properly britpicked b/c that gives fics a "genuine" feeling.

i can't STAND constant references to american culture unless the characters are in the US for some valid reason and are pointing out the differences, or making fun of the yanks, or something along those lines. it's so completely ANNOYING otherwise.

as for the emotional diarrhoea, i think that's a separate issue. i wouldn't find it in-character for the majority of the hp characters [esp. the male ones] to spout off about their feelings [unless it was dumbledore in his usual eccentric style].

[tray-la-la.livejournal.com]

i'm late to the party, clearly, but i had to pop in for a moment. i'm always fascinated with these discussions because they leave me feeling in a bit of a daze - a strange combination of bafflement, gratification at learning something new, and a tinge of embarrassment.

i'm american, and so while i always notice glaring americanisms and stories that have an outrageously american feel, the line between the permissible and the unpermissible in terms of what gets under british readers' skin is lost on me. try as i might, i don't really understand what people mean when they say "the characters start to feel american." given that a character who reads as american or an american tone to a story is a far more intangible thing than a spelling mistake you can point to and say "there it is! change it!," the critique is rarely expounded upon in a way that's meaningful for me as an author, and so i find myself at a loss as to how i'm to avoid some of the more nuanced pitfalls.

i love learning from these posts correct terms and usages. romaine mentioned 'bedside table' vs. 'nightstand' - i had no idea! i also never realized that 'alright' was an american spelling, which makes me feel rather dim now, as i've seen it used so often by others. in general, however, i don't think i agree that it's all so easy to go out and learn all the turns of phrase and correct terms particular to british culture. even if well-equipped with a british-english dictionary, i'd never think in a million years to search for the translation of nightstand. i'm also a student, and so i can't change the default on word to british english, because it will interfere with my work. i suppose i could switch it back and forth, but my previous attempt to change it at all led to irreparable damage to word's international dictionaries.

these discussions don't make me feel defensive or persecuted or anything ridiculous like that, just a bit fuzzy in the head. but onward and upward i shall go, now better equiiped with all right and bedside table to guide my way. :) though i can't get on board with aluminium. that's just too weird. *g*

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Hee! See today's post for the aluminium saga. Bloody Humphry Davy!

After spending all day thinking about it, I arrived at the conclusion that all I need for an American-written fic to not sound weird to me is for the writer to have attempted to remove anything obvious. If I can see that they have done that in good faith, then my brain can fill in the rest. God knows I am forever having to do it in published literature ;-)

[emansil-08.livejournal.com]

I always love entries like this, if for no other reason than to read the comments. The degree of passion felt by others in things that concern me not at all makes for some interesting debates in my own brain.

As I recently did my own entry )http://emansil-08.livejournal.com/6943.html ) about fics and what makes them awesome in my mind I won't go into detail on that again.

But generally speaking if I've found myself lost in a story, I generally fail to notice certain shall we say irregularities. Part of that may be as an American it would not cause me any degree of consternation to read the word mom, or color, or to have the boys emoting all over the place. It's what I'm used to and therefore I don't even see it. Where as for those of you who are not American reading a fic where Teddy Lupin sat down to a breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy would have you non Americans running for the closest sick up receptacle. For me as an American-especially a southern American it just made me really hungry. It was only later in retrospect that I thought-WTF Sausage Biscuits?? (And yes I'm 99 percent sure I read this in a fic,unless my dreams are much more lucid than I'd ever realized.) However the point remains I kept reading the fic, and if I remember correctly I found it quite acceptable.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is on occassions you've got to send your inner editor out for some much needed coffee or drinks or even an overnight shag. And learn to love a fic for the content not the context.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you about the being lost in a story effect. Hollycomb is a good example of that for me; I should hate her stuff, it's full of typos, it's overly emotional, it's All About the Angst. But there is a strength and freshness in her writing that means I jut don't care.

Sausage biscuits would probably be stretching a friendship, though. And is it wrong that I immediately thought you were making a comment on the euphemisms for penis thread?

Alas, my inner editor is also my outer editor, and I can;t turn her off, but I can still read overly American fics if they're good. I'm just then filled with the urge to make friends with the authors and offer to Britpick. Which I hose down by reminding myself how far behind I am with everything already ;-)

[emansil-08.livejournal.com]

Sorry forgot this from the earlier comment. Aluminum? What? I'm not quite sure what's wrong with that. Is it a non-Briticism?

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

See next post for aluminium/aluminum/and the other one I have forgotten details ;-)

[maya231.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I wrote another reply earlier but my browser crashed and I can't remember my surely much more insightful comments. Yeah. I hadn't even thought about a lack of emotional reserve, as you describe it, reading as American. Also, I had the profound realization that I don't think I've ever used the word dude. Maybe if I'd lived in California for a while...alas.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

My mother has so far gone out with three Californian women. 'Dude' sounds absolutely natural to me these days ;-)

I do like some of the emotional stuff Americans put in; when they think about what they are feeling and why, for example. But when they bang on about it for several paragraphs, I can sometimes become a little eye-glazey ...

Then again, I had to transcribe a tape of a lecture I gave last year and I fell asleep, so I am not the best judge ;-)