this is like some kind of revelation

[bagheera_san]

I have a German linguistics essay/termpaper to write (about something related to writing, written language etc - the technical term is graphemics or graphematics) and stupidly I thought that writing about online fandom from a linguistic perspective would be a cool idea. There are three problems with this

Comments

[x_los]

ETA: I finally understand why having the Doctor (or the Master) use cuss words is WRONG. All it takes is one instance of German cursing to make me see the light.

Agree compleeetely. Unless it's like--a VERY specific/intentional, discrete use, it's just so tonally weird for either it's not true. Also, 'young' language for classic Doctors and Masters is a big source of o_O for me.

[bagheera_san]

Register is one of the things that I still find very difficult to emulate - Three, for example, sometimes uses very specific, old-fashioned and slightly odd oaths, and I envy writers who can't just re-use/imitate that sort of thing, but can think of a similar phrase and know "This is something Three would totally say!"

[x_los]

That's just TONS of English period lit, though? Like the only way modern Anglophone writers could get a feel for that way of speaking is basically eating Victorian and Edwardian novels for years. Or a bit later--I think my Five's a bit Brideshead Regurgitated. But there's no real way to develop that except reading the sort of books the people who wrote Three read, especially the kind of cleverer Boys Adventure material they may well have read when they were younger.

[bagheera_san]

Okay, you have a point there. Still, until now I didn't realize just how crass even fairly mild cursing sounds out of their mouths.

Also: how do people read/write porn in their own language? I know I used to, but I just read an otherwise decently written fic and at the first explicit line my mind went NOOOO GET US OUT OF HERE and I had to stop. It's like discovering fanfic all over again...

[dragonofmemory]

Have you tried fandoms of actual German things? Because I find that makes a big difference in writing, at least in English vs. Japanese fandoms. There are times I've written for animes where I had to fight with the fic to make it sound normal instead of awkward, because it makes more sense in Japanese. I've ranted for hours on the fact we don't have a word for a more final good-bye.

But I can see why things might be more awkward in a different language, just because the original source has a certain flow to it. Like I'm sure there's some German equivalent to Three's way of speaking, but it still probably wouldn't flow quite right. It's like how dubbers used to like heavy southern accents for Osaka dialect. It drove me nuts, because it didn't suit the characters at all, at least not to me

[dragonofmemory]

Speaking of 'you' and other forms of address, it's hard writing for Japanese fandoms some times for that reason too. Especially with non-gendered or 'mysterious' people. Because they can have entire conversations without mentioning a person's gender, which can lead to a great reveal or mystery, and trying to convey that sort of thing in English sucks. -_-;;; I've run into trouble with some of Clamp's non-gendered characters too, since you can't really use 'it'. Well, you probably can with Mokona, but Ashura-ou makes things difficult. Curse you, English and your inadequacies...

[bagheera_san]

I don't know Japanese that well (despite the -san in my nick that's a relic from my anime days of yore) but the difference between Sie and du is a bit like the difference between -san and -chan, although not completely the same.

Actually, there's no proper equivalent of Three's sociolect in German. Obviously not, since Germany's class system is not very much like England's class system.

The problem with German things is that they're, well, German things. There's not much to fan there besides soaps I don't watch, soccer I haven't watched since I was 8, and Tatort (the German version of CSI... kinda). And German children's lit, which is too dear to me to trust the wilds of fandom with it.

[dragonofmemory]

I don't know it that well either, but when you listen to it so often, I think you're able to pick up the flow of it. And you do pick up things, here and there. It can make things awkward though, when you're trying to write for a character that speaks in third person and still make it sound normal. A lot of things don't always translate well. ^_

[aralias]

as much as this sounds painful and weird, it looks like you have a lot of material to talk about from a linguistic perspective. albeit a weird perspective. it's interesting, also, to talk about translation in a fandom where it's so not a problem in canon - thanks, tardis! who knows what happens in episodes where they go to germany and the germans hear german?

[bagheera_san]

I'll probably find something to write about, yes.

[asthenie_vd]

I think the lack of activity in das_fandom should be proof enough of how Germans on LJ prefer to just participate in the English speaking parts of fandom instead of copying and Germanizing what's already there. It's one of the only German wank!communities, and it's stone-dead! Ergo, there isn't even enough of a German LJ-Fandom to wank about!

(but perhaps you could share your findings on there?)

So, is it possible for you to write about how written language in the German fandom subculture got influenced by English? Because it sounds interesting, and definitely like something I recognize from trying to read German fanfic. And I say "trying" because, yes, there's a lot of akward syntax issues with missing verbs out there. (I'm absolutely certain there's been fics I really enjoyed too, but I couldn't come up with a single author's name

[bagheera_san]

Perhaps the problem is also that German fandom is several years behind Anglophone fandom in its development? I usually find fic that was written before 2004/5 difficult to read because it's not as good as newer fic, and the stuff I've found on fanfiktion.de so far reminds me terribly of nineties!fandom.

[firefly1311]

Very interresting!

[bagheera_san]

Your icon illustrates the other side of this coin - the pain caused by foreign media that thinks it speaks German. Wie ist so lustig? indeed.