If it helps you suspend disbelief, the early chapters gave me the impression that Harry was brought up by books, with his parents playing a supervising role at best.
Kids like that are already brought up by books. And Hermione talks like that in the story too. No, it’s a common careless HP fanfic author failure mode, not anything clever or intentional.
This seems like something that would take some amount of work to fix in case the author did care. Problem with speech pattern differences is that you have no idea they’re there if you’re not familiar with the target speech pattern, so it’s not like regular fact checking where you can generally tell when you’re dealing with something tricky. I’m not terribly familiar with spoken English and had no idea about incongruent Americanese in the lines, though I can’t think of anyone sounding very British either now that you mention it. The most straightforward fix would seem to be to run the dialogue through a native British English speaking editor, and that’s a bit heavyweight for a fanfic.
In fanfiction, the problem is solved (if the writer cares) collaboratively—American writers trying to do British English well is such a common problem that the proof-reading and copy-editing has a name: Britpicking. I assume that most of that is done by native speakers.
The problems can be subtle. I was shocked to find that modern British English doesn’t include “gotten”. How do they make it through the day without such a useful word?
And I’m not going to mention the book because the author’s a friend, but she writes excellent British English. When she had a couple of short passages of American dialogue, the result was agonizing. She didn’t make the typical error of exaggerating differences, but there was something very wrong with the rhythm.
That’s an interesting question. British people—some of them (and not all Americans, apparently) do use ‘gotten’, but seeing them use it in print will destroy some readers’ suspension of disbelief. Truth or plausibility?
It seems to me that it would add versimilitude to have some British characters use more Americanisms than others, but that might be too subtle.
The problems can be subtle. I was shocked to find that modern British English doesn’t include “gotten”. How do they make it through the day without such a useful word?
They just use “got”—at least, that’s what I was taught in school.
And I would definitely appreciate it if Eliezer had a Britpicker “fix” HP:MoR. There should be good chances of a sufficiently dedicated fan in Albion.
Preferably someone who lives in Oxford or Cambridge and knows from personal experience what the smart children of academics in those cities talk like. LessWrong would be one of the few sites where there would actually be quite a lot of people fitting that criterion …
There are no small children in Oxford; the place is entirely populated by students, academics who used to be students, and tourists.
The surrounding villages are fairly normal though. By which I mean typical English home-county.
ETA: But Harry is in no means typical. Unless something awful happens to these kids at puberty, there just aren’t enough player characters at 18 for Harry to be the norm.
Can you give a few examples of MoR’s more blatant Americanisms? As a non-native speaker, asides from the spelling issues (“realis/ze”, “toward/s”) and the most iconic terms (“bloody” vs. “doggone”), it’s hard to notice and remember which side of the Atlantic any given phrase comes from.
Hey, I’m originally of British origin. I can indeed confirm that the language Harry uses has made me wince a little. This hasn’t happened in the last few chapters, since we’ve been hearing from harry!Mort rather than Harry, and mind-dumps don’t respect style, but
“I’m in Mary’s Place, Professor, in Diagon Alley. Going to the restroom actually. What’s wrong?”
-contains the word “restroom”, which no speaker of British English would ever use in that context, and the question “What’s wrong?” is a little aggressive. I would suggest something like
“I’m in Mary’s Place, Professor, in Diagon Alley. Ah, I’m actually just going to the bathroom—is there something wrong?”
Aside: As an American, I’ve often been quite surprised to find out that authors were British (if I read the books before I got background on the author.) My reaction is “British? It can’t be!” This has happened with Alan Moore, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and Charles Stross. I wonder when my brain will figure out that not everyone who’s fun to read is from my home country.
Americans who learn music from British rock bands too. The British learn it from the Americans then sell it back to them better. That’s why it’s always fun to see Alan Moore writing in what’s quite definitely British rather than in American.
(And Neil Gaiman married an American, his children are American and he’s lived in America for many years.)
Fair enough, this is a derivative work and shouldn’t deviate from the established canon except where it needs to. I am tempted to argue for a special exemption in the case of Harry Potter fanfictions written by authors more skilled than Rowling.
There are things that assume American style systems that just don’t exist over here. In the first chapter it talks about “Elementary Schools”, where in the British system it would be Prep schools, probably (they tend to be classed the “best”). And Tenure doesn’t exist in the same way.
It didn’t jar with me too much. I just ignored the fact it was supposed to be British, to be honest.
If it helps you suspend disbelief, the early chapters gave me the impression that Harry was brought up by books, with his parents playing a supervising role at best.
Kids like that are already brought up by books. And Hermione talks like that in the story too. No, it’s a common careless HP fanfic author failure mode, not anything clever or intentional.
I don’t really see it as careless; it’s just a work obviously written by an American.
Well, I guess I do see it as careless, in the sense that “I don’t care”.
This seems like something that would take some amount of work to fix in case the author did care. Problem with speech pattern differences is that you have no idea they’re there if you’re not familiar with the target speech pattern, so it’s not like regular fact checking where you can generally tell when you’re dealing with something tricky. I’m not terribly familiar with spoken English and had no idea about incongruent Americanese in the lines, though I can’t think of anyone sounding very British either now that you mention it. The most straightforward fix would seem to be to run the dialogue through a native British English speaking editor, and that’s a bit heavyweight for a fanfic.
In fanfiction, the problem is solved (if the writer cares) collaboratively—American writers trying to do British English well is such a common problem that the proof-reading and copy-editing has a name: Britpicking. I assume that most of that is done by native speakers.
The problems can be subtle. I was shocked to find that modern British English doesn’t include “gotten”. How do they make it through the day without such a useful word?
And I’m not going to mention the book because the author’s a friend, but she writes excellent British English. When she had a couple of short passages of American dialogue, the result was agonizing. She didn’t make the typical error of exaggerating differences, but there was something very wrong with the rhythm.
It bloody does include “gotten”! It’s just regarded as an “Americanism”, hence evil to the purity and beauty of the sacred English tongue [*].
British writers writing ’Merkin can be painful. I’m Australian and even I can tell.
[*] may not be 100% pure nor 100% sacred. Beauty may vary. Grammar may have settled in shipping.
I did two polls because of annoying constraints. The second one has comments, the first one may eventually get comments.
The results back up what you’ve said.
Thanks. At this point, since I did get this confirmed by someone British, I’m going to do a livejournal survey. There may be local variation.
In fiction, it would pretty much never be wrong to remove “gotten”, but it does come out of their mouths.
That’s an interesting question. British people—some of them (and not all Americans, apparently) do use ‘gotten’, but seeing them use it in print will destroy some readers’ suspension of disbelief. Truth or plausibility?
It seems to me that it would add versimilitude to have some British characters use more Americanisms than others, but that might be too subtle.
They just use “got”—at least, that’s what I was taught in school.
And I would definitely appreciate it if Eliezer had a Britpicker “fix” HP:MoR. There should be good chances of a sufficiently dedicated fan in Albion.
Preferably someone who lives in Oxford or Cambridge and knows from personal experience what the smart children of academics in those cities talk like. LessWrong would be one of the few sites where there would actually be quite a lot of people fitting that criterion …
There are no small children in Oxford; the place is entirely populated by students, academics who used to be students, and tourists.
The surrounding villages are fairly normal though. By which I mean typical English home-county.
ETA: But Harry is in no means typical. Unless something awful happens to these kids at puberty, there just aren’t enough player characters at 18 for Harry to be the norm.
However, I think they’d be good enough examples that Harry PVE could be expected not to talk in American slang.
Can you give a few examples of MoR’s more blatant Americanisms? As a non-native speaker, asides from the spelling issues (“realis/ze”, “toward/s”) and the most iconic terms (“bloody” vs. “doggone”), it’s hard to notice and remember which side of the Atlantic any given phrase comes from.
raises hand
Hey, I’m originally of British origin. I can indeed confirm that the language Harry uses has made me wince a little. This hasn’t happened in the last few chapters, since we’ve been hearing from harry!Mort rather than Harry, and mind-dumps don’t respect style, but
“I’m in Mary’s Place, Professor, in Diagon Alley. Going to the restroom actually. What’s wrong?”
-contains the word “restroom”, which no speaker of British English would ever use in that context, and the question “What’s wrong?” is a little aggressive. I would suggest something like
“I’m in Mary’s Place, Professor, in Diagon Alley. Ah, I’m actually just going to the bathroom—is there something wrong?”
Aside: As an American, I’ve often been quite surprised to find out that authors were British (if I read the books before I got background on the author.) My reaction is “British? It can’t be!” This has happened with Alan Moore, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and Charles Stross. I wonder when my brain will figure out that not everyone who’s fun to read is from my home country.
Americans who learn music from British rock bands too. The British learn it from the Americans then sell it back to them better. That’s why it’s always fun to see Alan Moore writing in what’s quite definitely British rather than in American.
(And Neil Gaiman married an American, his children are American and he’s lived in America for many years.)
Fair enough, this is a derivative work and shouldn’t deviate from the established canon except where it needs to. I am tempted to argue for a special exemption in the case of Harry Potter fanfictions written by authors more skilled than Rowling.
There are things that assume American style systems that just don’t exist over here. In the first chapter it talks about “Elementary Schools”, where in the British system it would be Prep schools, probably (they tend to be classed the “best”). And Tenure doesn’t exist in the same way.
It didn’t jar with me too much. I just ignored the fact it was supposed to be British, to be honest.
Prep schools—as a Scot I have no idea what they are and they sound awfully posh. Are they the same thing as primary schools?
Awfully posh independent primary school is a good description. Although the sometimes go up to 13 years old as well.