You Fight A Pharmacist? Why Would You Even Do That?

[rionaleonhart]

I have now watched Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension, and I absolutely love it to pieces. Characters meeting their alternate-universe counterparts is a concept I've always been fond of, and Dr Doofenshmirtz takes it a step further by meeting his alternate-universe counterpart and then singing a duet with himself entitled 'I've Found a

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

By 'Americanisms' I just mean specifically American words or turns of phrase, which can be a bit jarring when put in the mouth of a British character ('anyways' and 'gotten' particularly struck me in the above fic - the characters of Sherlock would just say 'anyway' and 'got' (although 'gotten' is technically an old form that was phased out of many British dialects whereas American dialects kept it, rather than a form that was developed in America), and I once read a fic in which both Rubeus Hagrid and an eleven-year-old British child referred to a car as an 'automobile', which simply wouldn't happen).

I've definitely made my own equivalent slipups when writing in American fandoms; I recently reread a fic I wrote from the point of view of an American woman and realised I had someone 'waving at her from the pavement', and I always have trouble remembering to use 'gotten' and not to say that someone 'leant' against something. I try, but I suspect I'll never be able to make my American writing sound completely natural to someone who actually grew up in America. Still, we import a lot of American television, so I have a fair amount of exposure to US dialects to draw on.

OH NO, DON'T ASK ME ABOUT LANGUAGE, I'LL NEVER SHUT UP.

I haven't watched Kim Possible, I'm afraid!

[captlebubbles]

Got and gotten are actually fairly interchangeable, so it's not a specific case of "all American people use got instead of gotten". Automobile hasn't been used for a vehicle since like the 2o's, though. I presume this is the same on your side of the pond?

By pavement I'm going to assume you meant sidewalk, and now I know to not make the reverse mistake now that I'm writing in a British fandom again (though I don't think anyone actually wants to read my daft fanfic about Hagrid and McGonagall not-quite-dating for half a century, so I think I'm safe from any Brit-pickers).

(What do you mean luring you into a conversation about language?)

[rionaleonhart]

...hang on. I don't use 'gotten' myself, but I thought that in America it was the past/perfect participle. So:

We got on the train
We'd gotten on the train

Not interchangeable, but serving specific grammatical purposes. Is that not right? (I didn't mean to give the impression that I thought Americans said 'gotten' and only 'gotten'.)

I can't think of any context in which a British person would say 'automobile' other than 'they call cars automobiles in America, don't they?' (I realise that many or indeed most people in America call them 'cars' most of the time, but 'automobile is American for car' is a common misconception over here.)

'Pavement' is indeed the equivalent of 'sidewalk'!

[captlebubbles]

Erm. That may be right. I can't rely on my own use of the word, since my dialect fluctuates about as much as my accent, and I can't say I've actually paid attention to the way others use got/gotten. So I've no idea. (Aha, see, that part I clearly misread.

We call them cars. Unless they aren't cars, in which case we call them what they actually are (trucks, vans, semi's, beetles, etc). The biggest culture shock when I started watching Top Gear was the realization that car seems to be used as a blanket term much more often than in the 'States (at least that's the impression I got, I could have been wrong). I haven't heard anyone use automobile as the standard term outside of period pieces from the twenties. I mean, come on. Americans are lazy; we're going to use as few syllables as possible, y'know?

I like sidewalk better.