I agree with you that I think this is an interesting discussion that I'll be thinking about myself for quite a while. And it doesn't help that I couple it mentally with my general cynicism at American public schools and the state of our children's education outside of school. Which means that all of my comments can be taken largely with a grain of salt because I neither have nor spend time around children, so I really have no concept of what they can or can not deal with - I only hear stories of the back talking from teachers in my family!
As for your questions, I don't know that I can really answer them properly. I didn't read Tolkien or Dickens until high school (Dickens) and post-grad (Tolkien). As an International Politics major, I was already well aware of the differences in English and thus didn’t even notice that I was reading BE and not AE. I'd have to look back just to identify where in those novels I would have noticed it.
For C.S. Lewis, that would be the same age-group reading the books. Again, I don't remember what I thought reading them myself. For all I know that could be where I picked up the bad spelling habits and I've just blamed it on reading too much of the Toronto newspapers all these years.
I think what's interesting is that I didn't even know there were these changes or that they were that big of a deal until I started being involved in fandom. I mean, the point is supposed to be the story and these individual word choices really don't impact that. Which is probably one of the reasons I get a bit annoyed (although I generally try to remove my feelings from any discussion I'm having in fandom) with some of the britpicking -- although I've never used the word gotten, so this particular discussion isn't applicable. I'm fairly well-read, very highly-educated in International Politics. I understand the differences between cultures and am pretty well aware of some of the different word choices that one should make when writing for a British canon. However, even I sometimes have no clue that something would be called/done differently. Many in fandom call this lazy research. I don't. Because quite frankly I'm not going to research every single word of my fic to make sure that it's appropriate. I'm only going to look up those words/actions that I think could be different.
Somewhere else on this discussion someone was listing some common britpicking errors that bother them. Some I had never heard of! And I've read these discussions for several years! It would have never occurred to me that those words weren't used in the same manner they are over here. Additionally, although I understand your points completely, if the text was changed for printing in the US, then why is it so wrong for US-based fic writers to use their canon to write fic? There are days when I feel like it's getting to the point that fic headers should have a line for which canon they're using up with the warnings.
no subject
As for your questions, I don't know that I can really answer them properly. I didn't read Tolkien or Dickens until high school (Dickens) and post-grad (Tolkien). As an International Politics major, I was already well aware of the differences in English and thus didn’t even notice that I was reading BE and not AE. I'd have to look back just to identify where in those novels I would have noticed it.
For C.S. Lewis, that would be the same age-group reading the books. Again, I don't remember what I thought reading them myself. For all I know that could be where I picked up the bad spelling habits and I've just blamed it on reading too much of the Toronto newspapers all these years.
I think what's interesting is that I didn't even know there were these changes or that they were that big of a deal until I started being involved in fandom. I mean, the point is supposed to be the story and these individual word choices really don't impact that. Which is probably one of the reasons I get a bit annoyed (although I generally try to remove my feelings from any discussion I'm having in fandom) with some of the britpicking -- although I've never used the word gotten, so this particular discussion isn't applicable. I'm fairly well-read, very highly-educated in International Politics. I understand the differences between cultures and am pretty well aware of some of the different word choices that one should make when writing for a British canon. However, even I sometimes have no clue that something would be called/done differently. Many in fandom call this lazy research. I don't. Because quite frankly I'm not going to research every single word of my fic to make sure that it's appropriate. I'm only going to look up those words/actions that I think could be different.
Somewhere else on this discussion someone was listing some common britpicking errors that bother them. Some I had never heard of! And I've read these discussions for several years! It would have never occurred to me that those words weren't used in the same manner they are over here. Additionally, although I understand your points completely, if the text was changed for printing in the US, then why is it so wrong for US-based fic writers to use their canon to write fic? There are days when I feel like it's getting to the point that fic headers should have a line for which canon they're using up with the warnings.