Re: British and American dialogue -- Better Buffy Fics

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Date Posted: 04:43:43 04/03/03 Thu
Author: DiabloTrout
Subject: Re: British and American dialogue
In reply to: Gyrus 's message, "British and American dialogue" on 15:33:42 11/08/02 Fri

I'm Australian, so my perspective on this is a little different.I think the most important thing about finding a character's voice is the rhythm or cadence in which they talk.

Of course, a badly used phrase or innapropriate expression can suddenly jar the reader, but I find the fairly common inability of fic writers to capture those more subtle differences between American and English speech can grate the mental ear as well.

Then again, nobody ever said it (writing) was easy, did they?

The other very common mistake in fic which annoys me, and which the actual show has been guilty of at times is making either Spike or Giles a caricature of an Englishman. It's probably a manifestation of the writer only having VERY limited knowledge of what England and her people are actually like, so the things they put into the characters to show their "Englishness" are just total cliches, and we get lots of references to tea, crumpets and scones, Manchester United, etc.

I'm getting off topic here, but one more thing while I'm rolling.Spike calls people "poof" a lot, but James has never once managed to say the word in the correct manner.I think he does a pretty good job of the accent generally(although which part of England he is supposed to come from is completely impossible to determine), but he says "poof" like an American, with the "oo" portion pronouced the same way as you say "shoot" or "fruit".

People who actually use this word in their daily speech pronounce the it the way Americans say "book" or "look", with a short vowel sound.

>Recently, I've read several fics by authors who are
>British or otherwise educated in British English, and
>I find that some of them frequently write
>British-sounding dialogue for American characters. I
>find this somewhat jarring, especially when it's
>Buffy, Xander, Gunn, or any character whose speech
>patterns are especially American. (For example, I
>recently read a fic in which something bad happens and
>Giles tries to tell Buffy that there was no way she
>could have anticipated it. She replies, "But I
>should've done!" That just looks weird to a Yank like
>me.)
>
>So I ask the non-Americans in the crowd -- how often
>are American fic writers getting Giles', Wesley's, and
>Spike's dialogue right? (For that matter, how about
>Doyle's and Liam's?) What are the most common
>mistakes you've seen?
>
>Come to think of it, are the BTVS and ANGEL
>scriptwriters themselves portraying English and Irish
>speech realistically?
>
>-- Gyrus

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