Brit-picking: vital or a waste of time?

[emmagrant01]

jedirita and I discussed this topic over lunch yesterday, and it pops up on LJ constantly. I've never given it much thought, honestly, because everyone who's ever called me for an Americanism has been extraordinarily nice about it. The culture in the HP fandom seems to be that writers should use British English whenever possible, and I'll admit that I've bought into that 100%. I always looked at it as a respect-for-canon issue.

Rita feels differently, though, as do a lot of other people. So I started thinking about it, and now I'm questioning my sudden zeal to make sure my HP fic is as Americanism-free as possible. Can I really accomplish that? And is it really a worthwhile goal, considering there are so many other more important things to work on as a writer?

I'll keep this brief because so many people have already said something about this at some point. I'm still forming my thoughts, and I won't bore you with anything half-assed, for once! ;-)

For now, I'll just point to this post by lykaios, and say. "Yeah. What she said."

Comments

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I completely see your point about getting thrown out for the obvious cultural things, like graduation or football/soccer. If Harry said "y'all", I'd be rolling my eyes too! What about more subtle distinctions, though? For example, I had no idea that "gotten" and "bullshit" were strictly American words until like, this week. As I learn these things, I do endeavor to incorporate them into my fic, but there's no way I could ever realistically nail British English. I don't live in the UK, and though I listen to BBC World Service on the radio and spend a week or two in and around London every year, it isn't enough.

Where's the line between an annoying amount of American English in a fic and a tolerable amount? Is it the case that you'll just never be truly happy reading a fic written by an American writer, or is there some point at which you can overlook subtle turns of phrase that aren't quite right?

[oxoniensis.livejournal.com]

Is it the case that you'll just never be truly happy reading a fic written by an American writer

Oh, goodness, no! Turns of phrase that might sound a little odd won't affect my enjoyment at all, and I may not even notice some of them. But there are a few words and phrases that are used a lot by American writers that are very distincly American, and they do make me grimace ('gotten' is one, probably the biggest culprit for me, but also 'anyways' seems to have cropped up a lot recently). But I just put stories in Word and do a search and replace for things like gotten! If the story is well written, I might mutter under my breath a little about the Americanisms, but I'll still read and enjoy. *g* And it's always obvious when the author has made an effort, so a few stray errors aren't a big deal, IMO.

I have the same problem with American English. I listen really carefully to shows, and make notes on phrases that characters use, but I'm still never going to nail it perfectly.

Getting a bit serious and philisophical for a moment...

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, a point could be made for the use of the word 'gotten' in the HP fandom. It's actually older 'Queen's English' than the word 'got'. It was taken to America with the first wave of emigrants from Britain, and was kept on in the New World, while the language changed in the Old.

Given how archaic much of the Wizarding world seems to be, I can see them using 'gotten'. The problem of course, is that most people now understand it to be American, and therefore protest on reading it.

Also, in the age of television, same day world wide release movies, and the internet, the language is ebbing and flowing between countries. It's getting very hard to say exactly which country an expression began in. Buffy, for example, has influenced the language not only in the States, but also in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, basically anywhere it's shown without dubbing. The cross-cultural pop media saturation is so pervasive, that teenagers across the globe now speak a subset of common English, where there is little common ground in older generations. I think that sometimes when we argue about incorrect cultural use of words, we're really arguing about a generational language difference. Or in other words, it's a generation gap thing.