Thoughts of an anglophone straddling three countries
For the first time in a good while, I was browsing through fic for an American show.
Most people tend to make a pretty good point about 'Britpicking' when writing for, say, Doctor Who or Torchwood, which I think is awesome. I don't mind americanisms in random bits of descriptive prose, but when it's in dialogue coming out of characters' mouths, that feels as jarring as anything else wildly OOC would. And even when you can tell that someone's making the effort, I'll still see a word or phrasing they've missed, and it just looks weird.
But the same can apparently be said of Britons writing for American characters. So far today, I've read too many british terms that we would never use, and one Canadianism that the girl must have heard on tv and assumed was American. Given US imperialism (socially, politically, economically, the MSWord spellchecker) and all that, is it not PC to say, 'this is really awesome, but not quite american enough'?
So, I am totally willing to pimp myself out as a Britpicker/Ameripicker to anyone who wants it. I'm pretty good with Canadian English too, but shows actually set there don't tend to be distributed so widely. But I really can't stress how much more different the dialects are than most people would expect. Having spent the last few years here, I still occasionally run into a new word, which never stops feeling cool. The other day I mentioned something to do with cooties to my (British) girlfriend, and only thought to ask later if she knew what the word meant. She has definitely heard me use the word before, and seen it in a Calvin and Hobbes strip that we'd have both read growing up, but simply never thought to ask what it means. And, like with quite a few other words, there is not a direct equivalent here, because different cultures give rise to different words to describe their world. We eat different things in different ways. There are a lot of more subtle differences, and circumstantial differences, that we just don't even stop to think about. And being immersed in both cultures seems the most effective way so far to really notice them.
The English language is awesome.
In other news, the visa extension form's been posted off yesterday. Getting the last bits of required documents from class turned into a nine to five job. @#£?)$! immigration. But it's all well worth it, really.