jadesfire

Hmmm...It's happier with roster (once I spelt it right - brain not having a good day...) so I'll go with that for the time being.

Thanks!

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Curious to know why you're using American English?

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For an SGA fic :) I try and write in the 'native language' of the fandom, so for Torchwood/Doctor Who I'm fine, but for SGA, House and Criminal Minds, I rely on my US friends to keep me speaking the right language.

I know that it doesn't really matter, but somehow it makes a difference to the accent, and therefore the flow of the story, in my head. Which is a rather odd place to be at the moment :S

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Ah, makes perfect sense and as it should be.

I am having issues with someone on how Jack speaks as I feel he is an anglicised American and does not speak with the idiom of the accent.

I'm not sure that makes sense. What I mean is he doesn't talk like a Yank.

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It makes sense to me. I tend to rely on the scripts for Jack's speech patterns, and try not to think of him as American or English or anything else, which helps. But he's definitely a tricky one, and it always takes me a while to get back into his voice, especially after writing in US idiom.

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thalia

Yeah, in "Utopia," when he said "this lot," that really threw me, because it's just not a phrase I expect to hear with an American accent.

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Well, let's face it, he isn't truly American, the actor just happens to have a rather strange accent. It's a bit like Hugh Laurie's American accent...odd.

That wasn't meant to be as bitchy as it sounds. I'm just not going to have my 'Jack' using American phrases when the scriptwriters don't.

Mind you, I had forgotten how Welsh Ianto sounds initially.

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thalia

I dunno; I'm a native Chicagoan, and I think JB's accent sounds pretty typical. I did see an article several months ago that referred to his "mid-Atlantic" accent and went "Huh???" But I agree that Jack basically speaks British English with a non-British accent.

And, yeah, Ianto sounded *very* Welsh.

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Jack basically speaks British English with a non-British accent.

He's doing it on purpose to confuse us... ;)

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thalia

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. [g]

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I love the phrase mid-Atlantic. I've always got visions of someone underwater talking with bubbles coming out of their mouth.

I guess I'm a bit odd...

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Had to look it up. Which definition do you mean?

ro·ta (rō'tə) Pronunciation Key
n.
1. Chiefly British A roll call or roster of names.
2. Chiefly British A round or rotation of duties.

For #1, it'd be "roster."

For #2, if you mean like a rotation that students take in med school, it'd be "rotation." If you mean when doctors go around the hospital checking on patients (and teaching students), it'd be "rounds." (With an "s" even if it's only one.)

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Hmmmm... I mean the second one, but my US English is good enough to know that 'rotation' isn't what I mean, nor is 'rounds' (we use it in the same way). It's for an SGA story, drawing up lists of people to do things (mop floors, take out trash etc etc because, you know, someone has to).

Maybe I'll find a way to rephrase...

Thanks anyway :)

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nightdog-barks.livejournal.com

If it helps at all, sometimes that's called "doing the scut work" -- all those things that nobody wants to, but it has to get done anyway.

*g*

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*g* I'm not sure it does help, but you know what? It's so going in the story anyway.

hee.

EDIT: Gah! Really didn't help, because now I have two stories that are trying to get me to write them at the same time! I shall have to toss a coin... ;D

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There's not really a set phrase for that in American English (because we are (a) lazy; and (b) spontaneous! free! independent! LOL). "Chore list" is the phrase that comes to my mind, or just "list of assignments."

If people are choosing what they want themselves it could be a "sign-up sheet."

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I think it would be putting too much faith in the Atlantis personnel to have them volunteer for those kinds of jobs ;) I'll definitely rephrase - I never realised what a convenient word 'rota' was :D

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Oh! "Duty roster" is the term that would be used by the military

http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r220_45.pdf

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Ooh, excellent, thanks! It's Elizabeth, but I can make that work.

Thank you so much!

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I love learning about differences between British English and American English. My awesome beta

daisylily is a Brit, and I learn so much.

The funniest one so far was "valance." She said it's the thing that goes arond the bottom of your bed, whereas over here it's the thing that goes around the top of a window.

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thalia

What

deelaundry said... but I think it could also be something different, depending on the context. And if it's SGA, there might even be some specifically military term.

Bless you for trying to Americanize as much as possible. When I was reading SG-1, I got thrown out of stories fairly often by British terms--there is no lift in the SGC, and Daniel doesn't wear jumpers.

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It's always these little things that cause me problems. There was one House story that I wrote, where a kind commenter went through and pulled out the 'Britishisms'. I can't imagine trying to write in the wrong idiom for the fandom, or at least not making the effort to get it right.

And people wearing Jumpers in Atlantis would have completely different and rather confusing connotations...

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*g* I have a similar reaction to Jack wearing suspenders in TW fics - the word is applied to a very different item of clothing here than it is in the US. And while the mental image of Jack in lacey stockings isn't a bad one, I'm 99% sure that most times, that's not what the writer meant ;)

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thalia

Hee! I like that one! I think the world needs more cross-dressing Jack stories.

The whole Americanisms thing is a constant issue over in Harry Potter-land; a lot of authors get in trouble with "pants," which, in American, are trousers. And it's funny, but even though I'm American I get just as thrown out of a story by Americanisms in British fandoms as I do by Britishisms in American fandoms. It's so important to keep the voice accurate.

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*nods* I think you at least have to try - I have both Americans and Brits on my flist, so I rely on them to let me know if I'm going awry... Thankfully I write mostly TW/DW, which are both British (even Jack is mostly accent rather than dialect I think, so I don't worry too much about him), but I've been known to dabble in SGA, and found it unbelievably hard not to write in British English. Stupid things like stopping typing at the 'g' in 'catalog(ue)' *grin*

More important than not getting it wrong in the first place, I think, is being open to being pulled up on errors. I'm delighted if someone leaves me a helpful comment, correcting my Welsh grammar for example (on the odd occasion I use Welsh in fics), but some people go nuts if you point out that Ianto wouldn't say something because he's Welsh rather than American...

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thalia

Yeah, there are a not-insignificant number of American Harry Potter writers who don't think they should have to worry about Britpicking at all, and they drive me nuts. For me, fanfiction is best when it fits nicely into the canon universe, and I think using the same language as canon is part of that.

Not that I'm opinionated on this subject or anything....

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*g* Me too. I often rant about this sort of thing in my LJ - it's not just the language, it's the culture as well, and I find it more upsetting when it's a writer I like that messes up! A simple thing - I once saw a writer say that Jack and Ianto were drinking in a pub, and as they got up to leave, Jack left enough money for both of them on the bar. Nu-uh. Not in a British bar he didn't. They pour you your drinks, then you pay for them immediately. There are one or two exceptions, but that's mostly how it works here.

Now I appreciate it's not a big thing, but something like that just makes you stop and go 'huh?', and that's bad imho.

Harry Potter fandom scares me. I do love your icon though :D

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thalia

And that's why I think it's important to have a beta reader from the country of the fandom you're writing in--people get all hung up on "Is it color or colour?", but they miss the cultural details, which IMO are more important.

I just got back from a trip to the UK, and every time I go there I'm surprised at how many differences I never paid attention to before. Like asking for the "bill" instead of the "check" in a restaurant. Or saying "Sorry" instead of "Excuse me" when you're barging through a crowd (unless that's just Edinburgh). And the whole order your food at the bar and it's delivered to your table thing doesn't happen in the US, but I really like it.

And HP fandom is scary; I was lucky enough to find a sane corner years ago, and I've stayed there ever since.

From:

donutsweeper.livejournal.com

I wrote a SGA/TW fic where John Sheppard was describing what Jack was wearing- it felt so weird to type "suspenders" and not "braces"!

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I think it's maybe slightly easier for Brits to write Americanisms than it is the other way round - we're so exposed to American drama/cinema/books/tv in general. If you have any kind of ear for language you pick up the differences, especially the obvious ones like 'gotten', although I've seen that misused in fics by people who clearly don't get how language works. Although there is, of course, a tendency to regard the way you and your friends speak as representative of 'normal' for your country...

Someone famous once said that America and Britain were two countries divided by a common language, and I think that's true - we think we speak the same, but there are differences, and it's the writer's duty to be at least aware of them! [/rant]

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donutsweeper.livejournal.com

it's a good rant, and important in fanfic. I can't tell you how many times I was pulled out of a story by the misuse of a word. A lot of NCIS fanfic, for example, is written by non-americans and some of the wording choices are really at odds with the way the show would choose for their characters to speak.

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Switch it to 'schedule'.

*is not even slightly helpful*

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*glares* really not...

...although...

*pootles off to hit story some more*

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crystalshard.livejournal.com

It's great to see you're trying to stick to the native land of the series - Americanisms in Brit-based fics always throw me. Britishisms in American fic aren't quite such a jump, but I do notice them. So seeing you being that accurate is wonderful :)

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Sadly, the pedant in me won't let me get away with anything. The problem comes when the Americanisms creep back into my UK English fics.

donutsweeper usually puts me right when I've done something glaringly wrong :)

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aeron-lanart.livejournal.com

I use the UK English spell checker and just customise it to heck. Works for me, most of the time anyway.

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I think that would completely baffle me, which may also be the reason that I tend to concentrate on one fandom at a time - switching between characters is hard enough, without the language barrier getting in the way!

If I could get my life as organised as my spelling, I'd be well away *grin*

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msp-hacker.livejournal.com

Using rota is fine. I hear it in RL from American speakers, though speakers from a specific region.

I'd say I've I also used it, but I also use "industrial estates" in RL so I'm a bad case to study. = )

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Hmmm...interesting. That's the problem with these things, isn't it? There are exceptions to every rule. I've noticed that more British people are saying "I'm good" when asked how they are, when they used to say "I'm fine." These things creep in when you're not looking :)

From: (Anonymous)

I'd use "roster" in that context. Or "duty roster". "Roster" is a word that needs a modifier. Personnel Roster. Duty Roster. Toilet-cleaning roster.

Actually it's just fun to say. Roster roster roster.

--Terroster

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Hello you! *waves*

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travels-in-time.livejournal.com

*squints* Do I know you?

We must be on severely opposite schedules; seems like I haven't seen you around in forever!

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