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

[kayleigh-jane.livejournal.com]

I'm not really bothered by the spelling, as English isn't my first language and I rarely even notice it. Unless it is misspelled badly and the grammar is awful of course, but that I usually notice within the first three sentences. Which leads to not reading the fic, and thus missing the weepy emo boys, thank goodness.

What does annoy me is the trousers/pants thing. For me, as for most Brits, pants are your underthings and trousers go over that. So when someone wipes his hand on his pants (minds out of the gutter!) this makes me go 'huh?'. It becomes glaringly obvious in Torchwood fic, where one character is an 'American' and the others are Welsh. Only the really good authors can make the distinction between them.

Anyway, I agree with you! It just took me a while to say.

like a dictionary to the 43rd President of the USA

This made me laugh out loud. ♥

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

HEE! I always have to re-read those scenes to check if there was some undressing I missed. Though, shamefully, since I started working occasionally on fashion mags, even I have been known to say pants every now and then, or, far far worse, pant! But usually only in a sentence such as 'That's a lovely bias-cut polished cotton pant.' After which I hit myself soundly.

Glad I gave you a giggle ;-) Your icon did the same for me!

[kayleigh-jane.livejournal.com]

Brammers, what is a 'pant'? I'm getting a really odd vision here of a one-legged garment, and that can't be right...

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

That's the vision I had the first time I read it, too. Alas, it's fashion speak for trousers. What can you expect of a people who shmelessly resurrected the bubble skirt?