Muse: Linky Love
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I have to disagree - sometimes it happens the other way around - Alf Garnett/Archie Bunker for example
My fave American "let's just use the first year's script of the UK show" was 3's Company in which many of the jokes were because the male character was named "Robin" and people kept assuming he was female - the 'Merkins named him 'Jack' and then were sort of stuck, which resulted in a bunch of mincing and "people keep assuming I'm gay" fudges to try and get around it
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"yank” once got me accused of being racist or demeaning or somesuch, whereas I meant it no differently than “Kiwi”
An acquaintance from Texas once got very grumpy about being called a Yank. Which of course meant that absolutely everyone referred to him that way all the time, even when it wasn't necessary.
My understanding is that Americans from the South and South-West use 'Yank' to refer to those from the North-Eastern states.
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soul-crushing claustrophobia and toe-curling management-beauracratise that was such a hallmark of the original version....the two “heroes” ,Tim and Dawn, can only fufil their dream if they manage to escape.
The use of the clunking photocopier as a sort of between-scenes punctuation to really ram that point home was quite inspired, i think.
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Andre Alessi, in reply to
I have to disagree – sometimes it happens the other way around – Alf Garnett/Archie Bunker for example
True, but it's rare, and that approach stands out on American telly as unusual. I mean, it's hard to argue that the main characters in Friends were supposed to be pleasant and inoffensive, but I would seriously consider murder-suicide over having to inhabit the same room as the lot of them. Probably the best example of all this is Will & Grace, I guess-the titular characters were meant to be sympathetic in their normality, but they were so bland that the quirky offsiders, Jack & Karen, carried the show because they were allowed to be unpleasant (as much as anyone could carry such an awful piece of tosh.)
On the UK side, you have brilliant creations like David Brent, Alan Partridge, the Royle Family, Malcom Tucker etc
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Tom Beard, in reply to
I've often been puzzled by anglicised/americanised editions that localise the spelling - as if one couldn't deal with the few differences.
I've been having a different but related problem: if one's writing is set in a deliberately unspecified country, how does one deal with spelling and vocabulary differences? And vernacular is even more difficult.
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Steve Parks, in reply to
[Rich Lock said:] My understanding is that Americans from the South and South-West use ‘Yank’ to refer to those from the North-Eastern states.
Mine too, but I also thought when used by non-Americans it was simply slang for Americans, but not nasty per se.
Interesting. I think of ‘Yank’ a bit like ‘Pom’: not particularly nice. It always calls to mind a lot of ignorant people pontificating meanspiritedly around a BBQ (and then shutting up awkwardly as soon as they work out my background). But that could just be my issues. :)
Yeah I can see it. Burly obnoxious types talking of “bloody Pomies”, and “bloody Yanks” while flipping burger patties and swilling beer, that kinda thing. My accuser may have had a point. On the other hand, I don’t think ‘Pom’ per se would be enough to get an English person calling racism.
And Yankee Doodle is the official anthem of Connecticut:
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I picked up an ereader in the weekend mainly because it seemed the best way to keep buying books while not running out of space. I buy about one book a week so they tend to stack up (a standard paperback in the UK seems to be about 7-10 pounds, so 15-22$NZ, which is cheaper than NZ, iirc, where they were about at the 25-35$ mark in 07 when I left) and selling, gifting, shipping or otherwise disposing of books when moving countries was not fun and I don't want to repeat the experience.
The Kindle has a few magazine and newspaper subscriptions on offer, so I've trialled a couple and I suspect this may be one of the more useful functions. That and the 3G coverage in 100 countries included in the purchase price
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