Re: British and American dialogue -- Better Buffy Fics

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Date Posted: 14:05:13 11/26/02 Tue
Author: joan the english chick
Subject: Re: British and American dialogue
In reply to: Gyrus 's message, "Re: British and American dialogue" on 12:49:19 11/26/02 Tue

>>Here is link where some of discussion is about your
>>question
>
>Thanks! I'm not surprised that at least some Brits
>have complaints about the way Americans write dialogue
>for British characters, especially in the HARRY POTTER
>fandom. At least, in BTVS/ANGEL fic, American writers
>can always make the excuse that most of the English
>(and Irish) characters have been in the States for a
>long time and could have picked up some local speech
>habits.

I am not part of the Harry Potter fandom but I have read some of the books, and I would point out that part of the problem is that the books are Americanized for sale in the US. The American publisher replaces British slang with American slang (e.g. torch->flashlight, bonnet->hood, revising->studying) in order to dumb-down the books, er, I mean make the books accessible to American kids. So it's probably not that easy for a Harry Potter fanficcer to get the hang of the British dialogue style unless they are reading the British versions of the books.

Uh, but that's off-topic, sorry.

>Anybody know if there is some kind of on-line guide to
>Britspeak out there?

I have seen them, but they are generally just slang guides, e.g. "when a Brit says this, it means this in American" which would not necessarily solve the problem. Many of the things that fanfic writers get wrong are more speech-pattern/style things, which you can only pick up from association, you can't really exactly learn them from a list.

>>I do not register, if a writer as English or
>>American, except if they come with dr. Who jokes
>>(Defiantly a sign to me that the writer is English).
>
>Clearly, you don't know enough nerdy Americans. :)

Well, it depends on the characters too. I would buy Willow or Xander making a Dr. Who joke. If it were Buffy, not so much. (Dawn did make a Monty Python joke in a recent episode, just proving that Willow and Xander are having a positive influence on her!)

Anyway, in conclusion let me just agree with the original post -- it irritates me as well when I read fanfic where the BTVS characters (other than Giles and Spike) use British slang.

-joan the english chick
(who is in fact American, long story)

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