Re: Comprehending British dialect (Re: British v. American Vocabulary)


11 Sep 1995 09:33:40 GMT

In article <42tc6h$isd@katiska.clinet.fi>,
Lynoure Rajam{ki <lynoure@clinet.fi> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson (mol@marvin.df.lth.se) wrote:
>: In article <1995Sep6.071227.20964@news.cs.indiana.edu>,
>: Sam Hulick <shulick@mango.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>: >
>: >The only problem I have is playing a British game and running into all
>: >sorts of things where I think "What is THAT?" :) Let's say that a
>: >puzzle involved putting a diaper on a baby (weird example, but oh well
>: >:). You look around and eventually.. "You can see a nappy here." How
>: >would an American know what that is?
>
>: Is it really that difficult?
>
>Well, I guess you and I have studied English and not learned American or
>Brittish English when we were children. Think about those words as
>something you _never_ use: Those are like words taken from a different
>language.

Well, yes, but I suppose my point is this:

I'm not a native English speaker (as you might have guessed from my
email address, if not from my name :-)). I was taught British English
at school but I've been exposed to American English a lot from books,
films, TV, etc.

I can appreciate that Americans can get confused by British games, and
vice versa, especially when it's not just a matter of differnt
vocabluary, but of actual "false friends", such as the totally
different meanings of "suspenders".

What surprises me is that this should be a major problem. Or, rather,
I think that the problem has been misstated as one of dialectal
differences when it's really one of cultural differences, or of the demands
put on the player by the author.

For example, one example was quoted about an "airing cupboard". Is
this really a dialect problem? Isn't it rather a matter of British
_plumbing_, rather than of British _language_? I somnetimes wonder
whether anyone except the British themselves understand British
pluimbing, with its watertanks (complete with floating dead pigeons),
external pipes, and so on.

Similarly, the dumbwaiter in "Curses": The Americans complain that
they don't know what it is. But how many British players had to look
it up?

Magnus