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    #16
    Originally posted by Goose View Post
    I consciously try to use the British way of doing things, because I live in England. However, I spent four years of my childhood in America, so that's where I learnt English, which means that I still spell certain things the American way. And I speak with an American accent, though apparently less so then when I first meet my girlfriend. For example, I now pronounce France the English way, not the American way. And I use English words instead of American ones, like lift for elevator. Well, mostly at least; I still 'accidentally' use American English.
    Heh. I read so much written material that's in British English that I now code-switch between the two all the time which makes for some interesting conversations, since I do it in spoken* as well as written English. Add to this the fact that I studied French for four and a half years, and therefore when I encounter certain words in English that are actually loanwords from French, I tend to use the French pronunciation, and... well, you get the picture.

    Oh, and then there's the fact that part of my family growing up was bilingual in English and Swedish, which means I'll occasionally pepper my speech with the odd idiomatic phrase in Swedish, despite my not really speaking that language. I'm surprised I don't get more odd looks than I do.

    * albeit in a purely American accent, except when I'm on the phone with my Australian friend, whose speech for some reason influences my own

    (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
    Sum, ergo scribo...

    My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
    sigpic
    now also appearing on DeviantArt
    Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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      #17
      Originally posted by SF_and_Coffee View Post
      Heh. I read so much written material that's in British English that I now code-switch between the two all the time which makes for some interesting conversations, since I do it in spoken* as well as written English. Add to this the fact that I studied French for four and a half years, and therefore when I encounter certain words in English that are actually loanwords from French, I tend to use the French pronunciation, and... well, you get the picture.

      Oh, and then there's the fact that part of my family growing up was bilingual in English and Swedish, which means I'll occasionally pepper my speech with the odd idiomatic phrase in Swedish, despite my not really speaking that language. I'm surprised I don't get more odd looks than I do.

      * albeit in a purely American accent, except when I'm on the phone with my Australian friend, whose speech for some reason influences my own
      Funn.y enou, I'm actually Swedish! And I tend to do the exact same thing. Occasionally I'll say something in English, and my girlfriend will look at me in the stragest way, because more likely than not, I'll have taken a Swedish phrase and translated it, word for word, into English. And believe me, that doesn't work! I tend to do the same in Swedish; say English things directly translated into Swedish. Boy oh boy does my mum find that annoying!
      My Stargate fan fiction @ FF.net | NEW: When Cassie Calls Teal'c.

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        #18

        Yeah, my family is of Swedish descent, all the way around. All four grandparents spoke it, with one having come from there; the rest of my great-grandparents were from Sweden as well. My father grew up speaking both languages (ironically, it was my mother's mother who was the immigrant, though). My mother could speak some. I could easily have grown up bilingual, except that for some reason the adults in the family decided to keep me largely ignorant of Swedish except for certain phrases, so that they could have a means of conversing privately among themselves even if I were in the room with them. Drove me up a wall.

        My high school actually offered Swedish as one of the foreign language options, and I should have taken it.

        ETA: The truly funny part is that lately, my husband has begun using one or two of the more common Swedish words and phrases that I use, often in talking to our cats. And he's of Russian/Slavic descent.

        (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
        Sum, ergo scribo...

        My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
        sigpic
        now also appearing on DeviantArt
        Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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          #19
          And I speak with an American accent, though apparently less so then when I first meet my girlfriend.
          since this is the Grammar thread, i'll correct.
          And I speak with an American accent, though apparently less so than when I first met my girlfriend
          Than=comparison
          Then=time-related *not sure how to explain*

          i said "i am smarter than you" and then he ran off.



          as to english:

          i tend to spell honor and colour. and i'm not even from an english country. (i'm from The Netherlands, as it's officially called)

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            #20
            American rules make more sense than English ones, which are the ones taught in most European countries even today. I'm Finnish but we lived in the UK when I was a teenager, so it confuses some people when they meet me, I speak British English but write American, even though I sometimes use British expressions. If I write, I'll use faucet and elevator. If I speak, it's tap and lift! Or depending on the person I'm talking to, if they're American I'll use American expressions to avoid confusion.
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              #21
              Originally posted by thekillman View Post
              since this is the Grammar thread, i'll correct.


              Than=comparison
              Then=time-related *not sure how to explain*

              i said "i am smarter than you" and then he ran off.



              as to english:

              i tend to spell honor and colour. and i'm not even from an english country. (i'm from The Netherlands, as it's officially called)
              Well caught!

              Originally posted by maneth View Post
              American rules make more sense than English ones, which are the ones taught in most European countries even today. I'm Finnish but we lived in the UK when I was a teenager, so it confuses some people when they meet me, I speak British English but write American, even though I sometimes use British expressions. If I write, I'll use faucet and elevator. If I speak, it's tap and lift! Or depending on the person I'm talking to, if they're American I'll use American expressions to avoid confusion.
              I find both sets of rules just as odd and difficult! But it's nowhere as near as difficult as Finnish... I've tried to learn it and it's bloody impossible!
              My Stargate fan fiction @ FF.net | NEW: When Cassie Calls Teal'c.

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                #22
                Being Australian but participating here and on fanfiction.net which have a high proportion of US readers often trips me up. Not just spelling either - word usage (e.g. nappy vs diaper, crib vs cot, trunk vs boot, etc.), units of measurement, and things like the date being mm/dd/yy instead of dd/mm/yy like it is in Aus.

                I've created my own rule here ... if I'm writing a character who is from the US and they are saying or directly thinking something then I'll use Mom, color, etc for that (to the best of my ability because I still have words pointed out to me that I just didn't know were different in the US than in Australia). But if it is part of the descriptive prose - i.e. not something someone is directly saying - then I'll stick with my Aussie-isms.

                What do others think - should we tailor our spelling for who the main audience is or write to the version of English that is native to us?

                I also have a question about the use of contractions in writing. Is there a rule about this? I ask because when I read a fic where there are few contractions used, particularly when it's dialogue, it breaks the flow in my head ... I'll actively notice that Sheppard keeps saying things like 'I am ...', 'did not', or 'It is ...' when watching the show his verbalisation is much more casual than this. If you read something aloud this kind of thing is really obvious. So, are there rules about using contractions, and if so what are they?
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                  #23
                  Originally posted by ShaViva View Post
                  Being Australian but participating here and on fanfiction.net which have a high proportion of US readers often trips me up. Not just spelling either - word usage (e.g. nappy vs diaper, crib vs cot, trunk vs boot, etc.), units of measurement, and things like the date being mm/dd/yy instead of dd/mm/yy like it is in Aus.

                  I've created my own rule here ... if I'm writing a character who is from the US and they are saying or directly thinking something then I'll use Mom, color, etc for that (to the best of my ability because I still have words pointed out to me that I just didn't know were different in the US than in Australia). But if it is part of the descriptive prose - i.e. not something someone is directly saying - then I'll stick with my Aussie-isms.

                  What do others think - should we tailor our spelling for who the main audience is or write to the version of English that is native to us?

                  I also have a question about the use of contractions in writing. Is there a rule about this? I ask because when I read a fic where there are few contractions used, particularly when it's dialogue, it breaks the flow in my head ... I'll actively notice that Sheppard keeps saying things like 'I am ...', 'did not', or 'It is ...' when watching the show his verbalisation is much more casual than this. If you read something aloud this kind of thing is really obvious. So, are there rules about using contractions, and if so what are they?
                  Spelling: Do I change my spelling to American standards when writing? No. When writing dialogue, and someone says colour, I spell it colour. However, if writing an American character, I might spell colour as colour, but I wouldn't have them say lift instead of elevator. I adopt my vocabulary in order to fit characters nationality, but not my spelling.

                  Contractions: I absolutely hate it when people don't use contractions in dialogue! Whilst it is proper to say "did not" or "I am" in writing, people do not, for the most part, speak like that, and dialogue is, essentially, a transcript of what people are saying. Therefore, most of the time, people say "didn't" or "I'm". There are, of course, certain times when one would say "did not" or "I am", but people who write it all the time just bug me, and I always try to point it to them. Dialogue is supposed to be natural and flowing, and the use of contractions or slang is totally acceptable within dialogue.
                  My Stargate fan fiction @ FF.net | NEW: When Cassie Calls Teal'c.

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                    #24
                    Contractions:

                    depends on the setting. contractions give a casual feeling.

                    a mom will say to her kid "i'm proud of you". but a teacher to an older kid will say "i AM proud of you". the "am" packs more of a punch but also makes it less casual.


                    a regular person speaking will use contractions, but you can't put an emphasis on a contracted sentence. not properly anyways.

                    if someone is attempting to make a point, and/or need emphasis, they won't use contrations. "but that IS what i'm talking about". "i AM sorry". "i would like that."

                    but in other cases you contract. *exclaim of happyness* "THAT's what i'm talking about"
                    (cliche movie quote).
                    "i'd like that" (for example in a store)

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                      #25
                      England and the United States: two countries separated by a common language.

                      The variations between American, Canadian, Australian and English usage are a vivid demonstration of how un-rigid the rules of English grammar are.

                      Seaboe
                      If you're going to allow yourself to be offended by a cat, you might as well just pack it in -- Steven Brust

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                        #26
                        Originally posted by maneth View Post
                        American rules make more sense than English ones, which are the ones taught in most European countries even today. I'm Finnish but we lived in the UK when I was a teenager, so it confuses some people when they meet me, I speak British English but write American, even though I sometimes use British expressions. If I write, I'll use faucet and elevator. If I speak, it's tap and lift! Or depending on the person I'm talking to, if they're American I'll use American expressions to avoid confusion.
                        In some parts of the US, "tap" is the word for faucet. I use it myself sometimes. I also say "lift" sometimes - it's easier and shorter than "elevator" and most Americans know what it means. I'm American, I've lived here all my life, but with the amount of exposure we get to British writing and television, most of us can navigate British English quite well.

                        (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
                        Sum, ergo scribo...

                        My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
                        sigpic
                        now also appearing on DeviantArt
                        Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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                          #27
                          Written British English isn't all that difficult, and it's not that different from American English; certainly not different enough to make it incomprehensible. It's the dialects and accents that are difficult
                          My Stargate fan fiction @ FF.net | NEW: When Cassie Calls Teal'c.

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                            #28
                            ShaViva, the "rule" you're using for dialogue and inner thought isn't really "your own"; it's universal. It's exactly the way it should be. If the thought is originating in your character's head, whether spoken aloud or not, then you phrase it in dialect that character would normally use. I'll go one step farther and say that you should probably also do that for indirect observations made by the character, for example if Samantha Carter is watching a mother change an infant, she isn't going to watch as the mother puts a fresh nappy on the baby -- she'll watch as the mother puts a fresh diaper on the baby. Make sense? She will overlay her own terms even on observations originating outside her own mind.

                            As for spelling, I don't think it matters all that much , at least to an American reader, whether you're writing colour or color, even in dialogue, because we'll pronounce them exactly the same. Again, we get enough exposure to written English from Canada, the UK and even from Oz that most of us are fairly well accustomed to the differences in spelling and hardly even notice. (And some of us do realize that our spellings are in the minority for English on a global level!)

                            But here's the one thing with dialect: using it for narrative isn't the best idea. Standard English should always be used for that, unless the narrative is coming from a first-person POV narrator who would be expected to use dialect. That said, if you're writing a Stargate fic and standard usage in your nation is "nappy" and "cot" and "lift" rather than "diaper", "crib" and elevator, or other similarly minor differences to the American/Canadian English originally used in the Stargate franchise, it's no big deal to use the standard for your nation.

                            Contractions: That's pretty simple. If your character would use contractions, then have him or her use them in any instance when you think he or she would do so in dialogue. The same holds for his or her internal self-talk, thoughts or even observations. You can also use contractions in narrative, to a reasonable extent. The one place I personally have avoided them in my current piece is when I wrote dialogue between an English-speaking character and one who spoke a language found on the planet he visited, and they were trying to get along in that planet's language while my English speaker was still learning it. Since things like contractions are often among the last things a person learns when they are learning a language, it made sense to leave them out of those early exchanges. I began to introduce them in later ones, as an indication that my English-speaking character was getting better at the planet's language and could now understand and use those more casual parts of speech.

                            (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
                            Sum, ergo scribo...

                            My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
                            sigpic
                            now also appearing on DeviantArt
                            Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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                              #29
                              Originally posted by Goose View Post
                              Written British English isn't all that difficult, and it's not that different from American English; certainly not different enough to make it incomprehensible. It's the dialects and accents that are difficult
                              Very true. Then again, we have dialects and accents even within both nations, I think, that can occasionally confound our own countrymen! There are parts of Appalachia where I'd almost need an interpreter to really understand what a person was saying, and I grew up on the fringes of another part of it!

                              (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
                              Sum, ergo scribo...

                              My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
                              sigpic
                              now also appearing on DeviantArt
                              Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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                                #30
                                Okay, more spelling mistakes that make me cringe:

                                It's definite, not definate

                                It's pregnant, not pregnate

                                Seriously, where do people get these?

                                (Yes, I'm female. Okay?)
                                Sum, ergo scribo...

                                My own site ** FF.net * All That We Leave Behind * Symbiotica ** AO3
                                sigpic
                                now also appearing on DeviantArt
                                Explore Colonel Frank Cromwell's odyssey after falling through the Stargate in Season Two's A Matter of Time, and follow Jack's search for him. Significant Tok'ra supporting characters and a human culture drawn from the annals of history. Book One of the series By Honor Bound.

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