Julia Mae

Here's what I don't understand about either novels or TV/movies. If you know your product will be distributed outside of your country, why not just have it read by someone from that country? I mean, seriously, these days, they can just email the file and have it read through. My daughter used to work with a woman who's mom worked for the American publisher of the Potter books and I know they went back and forth with Rowling and "Americanized" a lot of the language, though it still took me a while to figure out pudding was dessert. Anyway, there's some sort of precedent for doing this.

The thing about script-writing is, if it gets produced it will probably have at least one actual British actor in one of the three roles that are written as British characters. The actors themselves can make the language more authentic, of course. BUT - the script is also likely to be read by British readers or producers. These are the ones I am trying to not "bounce out" (great way to put it) of the story. I'm just hoping for a bit of flow and no jarring mis-uses of language. Y'all are delightfully kind to help out!

I think something music-related isn't out of the question, because during long hours in the lab, he'll be talking about all sorts of things and we know what his favorite topis is! But not sheet music, it would have to be folded and one never, ever, folds their sheet music. But she might go with some recordings of music he has mentioned he favors or maybe an iPod with dock so he can music with him. I think Baker Street Irregular already mentioned this idea on our most amusing first page.

Yes.

OK, Watson's brother Harry became John's sister Harriet -- any other sex changes? Hmm, yes, there was Dr. Stapleton in "Hounds." Was there ever a male Sgt. Donovan in canon? Anybody else? Interesting idea, Jim's sister. If Harry became Harriet, who would brother James become? There isn't any traditional feminine version of the name that I can think of, though there are a few women named Jamie these days. Interestingly, speaking as we are about gender re-assignment, modern female "Jamies" are not nicknamed generally for any longer version of a woman's name. The name was popularized because of Jamie Lee Curtis, born with hermaphrodism, whose wise parents waited for their child to become old enough to chose a gender before corrective surgery and chose a name that would fit either gender. Of course, we all know Doyle screwed up and named both Professor and Colonel Moriarty "James." They called James "Jim" or "Jimbo" on the show. I think if a woman named "Jamie" shows up, it would be a delightful tongue-in-cheek way for the writers to pay homage to that.

UNLESS, we get a TARDIS!!! Then we can go back in time to when he was alive and ask him! Except, that's kinda not gonna happen... Yeah, I was kinda joking around, but... Remember in Canon Moriarty has a brother. I fully expect that person to make an appearance, though as I have said, it would be so in keeping with the show to make him a sister. Who knows what James may have said before he died or written in a journal someplace? We might get a bit of time-travel out of Mofftiss, yet!

I'm sorry, I misunderstood your first question. Stupid of me, of course you recall when they were said. During Baskerville, Mycroft had Moriarty locked up. It was then he supposedly told Moriarty about Sherlock in exchange for information. That would be pretty freakin' cold, giving up your brother like that. My theory has always been that Mycroft and Sherlock started planning Moriarty's demise the minute Adler was defeated. And that part of it was convincing Moriarty there were estranged. (And I do have a link: The Holmes Boys: Stalking Moriarty) Anyway, that is where I would speculate the Iceman name came from, the time of Moriarty's confinement when he had relatively frequent contact with Mycroft.

Yes, I almost forgot how, when I was a child, this kind of symbolism was common in adult writings. It came, iirc, from Freudian basic theory as an explanation of the conscious, unconscious and subconscious. The conscious being the main rooms of the house where we live out our daily lives. The attic being the unconscious where we store all sorts of things that we only need to use occasionally and don't think of the rest of the time, and the basement or cellar as the subconscious where we keep our deep dark secrets. It was a clumsy analogy at best, and somehow segued into "attic" being our heads. Doyle uses that in a speech about what to keep up there, not so much clutter you can't find what you need, that Mofftiss turned into Sherlock's speech about not caring if the earth goes around the sun, because he only keeps what's really useful. It was beautifully done, I thought. But yes, attic as head, lumber as old furniture. OH! And a cosy in terms of story means something you "cosy up in front of the fire" with, accompanied by cocoa and under a nice afghan, to read. Drawing room mystery is best.

Thank you for telling me it "sounds quite American" and giving me an option. That's brilliant of you! You are most welcome, but I only can hope for approximation. I have one character who says, "Fancy a walk in the park?" And then I thought wait, just because it's in Harry Potter, does the average British guy really says that? I left it in, I figure Rowling knows better than I. But I will defer to you. Same as here! Unless "lumbers" is a verb, of course. Maybe it was a typo.

They originated when Irene Adler said them and attributed them to Moriarty. I see no reason to believe she didn't quote him accurately. Is Sherlock a virgin? Quite possibly. Although, it's also possible when he was young that he had a sexual experience and found out how much it affected his ability to think clearly, stay focused, do the work he loves more than anything. Thomas Merton, the contemplative monk and mystic, had quite the active life at ... Oxford, I think... anyway, the story is he left an illegitimate child behind when he entered religious life. I always think of Sherlock as this sort, in the world but not of it. Or, like Spock, aware of how easy it is for his passions to consume him and so, eschewing all emotion. IMO, as with classic canon, Sherlock is a heterosexual man who chose to give up romantic/sexual relationships in favor of total dedication to his craft. Is Mycroft the Iceman? You'd have to ask Moriarty exactly what he meant and we can't because, yanno, he's dead!

Seriously! I love them so much for being so generous with their time, here.

You know aely, we should just post this whole thread on Wikipedia. What a font of specific info you are!

Oh, excellent. So, let's talk articles. Imagine you go to the fridge and find all the food has yellow mold on it. ew You say to your friend, "There is take-away in our immediate future." Or do you say, "There's a take-away in ..." Or do you say "There is fast-food ..." I'm sorry to be so nit-picky, I just want to totally respect your way of speaking by reflecting it accurately. I spend a lot of time everyday watching BBC on Netflix to try and get the cadence right. I keep re-writing sentences so actors can speak them in that flow. Also, I just read that in Tibet, BC had to make a blackboard out of lumbers. LUMBERS? (Does it mean "boards?")

While waiting for tomorrow and the interesting responses from across the water, I found this on Wikipedia: English words that survived in the United States and not in the United Kingdom A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"), candy ("sweets"), skillet, eyeglasses and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".%5B68%5D During the 17th century, English immigration to the British colonies in North America was at its peak and the new settlers took the English language with them. While the term fall gradually became obsolete in Britain, it became the more common term in North America. Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism, although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and North East England, that still continue to use it and sometimes also use putten as the past participle for put (which is not done by most speakers of American English).%5B69%5D Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), quit ("to stop", which spawned quitter in the U.S.), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler), baggage, hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example monkey wrench and wastebasket, originated in 19th century Britain. The mandative subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in American English than it is in British English. It appears in some areas as a spoken usage and is considered obligatory in contexts that are more formal. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (these meanings are also frequent in Hiberno-English) than British English.%5B70%5D%5B71%5D%5B72%5D ------------------------------------ I was especially surprised by "diaper," for some reason. (source)

No, I'm asking how the British person refers to McDonald's. (I know. Another straight line. Have fun, but please give me an actual answer, also!)

Right, as in "Are you out of your gourd?!" -- meaning roughly the same thing as Ron Weasley's "Are you mental?!" Precisely! BRITISH POSTERS: (or anyone who knows) New question on BE useage: I know in BE "take-away" is for ordering food and then picking it up. AE is "takeout." But does take-away include fast-food? Would you say in BE: "I'm going to get some fast food?" Or would it still be take-out? Or something else?

You are more than welcome. If I could, I'd get you better internet access. I think amongst some of us, it was obvious what they were doing. I think I posted one here once, where Moriarty is wearing Sherlock's coat and shaking Mycroft's hand. That's when I knew they were messing with us. I thought it was brilliant. But some people are very devoted to their theories, even more than I, and insist on accounting for every setlock picture. I have to assume the hypnotist was a personal friend of someone. Was there an actual scene or did they just get shots of him around the set?

The director of S3E1 comes clean at the end: For Carol and those who can't stream video very well, he said, "We did a few false shots, so, you know, there are all these things that people saw that have nothing to do with it, that's the way we handled it." It's right around 1:25. Which makes me feel good, as I have been claiming for a while to those who have based their fall theories on setlock: you can't do that. And shouldn't, as Moffat said clearly we can figure it out from what we saw. We'll see.

... or [whatever'd] out of his gourd. Did anybody say snockered yet? Also, for mild inebriation: lit tipsy Yes, "gourd." We use that a lot to mean head, I think. My aunt used to grow gourds and shape them into heads and paint them. In the 50s.

That and war. We started out fighting against each other but since then the Americans and British have fought, at least on the same side and often together. I know in both world wars a lot of American men thought we should have gotten into it earlier and went to England to volunteer. We exchange our movies and television, it's a wonder we have so many differences in language.

Here's a partial AE list: bombed wasted hammered plastered sloshed blotto squiffed blasted stewed "Squiffed" is pretty old-fashioned, but it's in the movie "Harvey" so I always include it. I notice some BE words often have to do with bodily functions or the results of the condition. A lot of the AE words connote violence, like the booze attacked them and won. But "out of his skull" or "off his head" would be like "bombed out of his mind" I think.

Yes, not polite company, but friends speaking privately. This is interesting, it seems booze brings us together! All of these: 'sloshed', 'plastered' or 'shit-faced' are also common AE expressions. As is "gone on a bender." Love "rat-arsed." Thanks again!

May I prevail upon my British language specialists one more time? In the US, if a guy has gone on a bit of a binge, we might say he is "drunk off his ass." (Amongst other colorful expressions.) What are some of the BE forms of the same idea?

http://thesherlockedblog.tumblr.com/ It's all about the 'Batch

The trick with language, even when we are supposedly sharing one, is getting the connotations and local jargon right. The US is such a big country and we have so many cultures and sub-cultures, we have these issues often even with one another. On a hot summer day during a car trip, my father once went into a small store and asked for six "pops." Instead of handing him bottles of soda, the man put six popsicles into a bag. Dad was too embarrassed to correct him and we all had to eat really fast to keep them from melting all over the inside of the car. He should have said "sodas" and we were only two hundred miles form home! About an hour ago, the maintenance guy at my apartment was looking for a ... I think he said "four-way." He meant an "x-wrench." And I'm willing to bet a few people here would have a different word. I put a whole page on my blog to explain what "boffin" means for Americans. To our ears, it sounds like a synonym for "shagging." This is why I never read poetry in translation. You might get the meanings of the words, but you never get the subtleties and nuance.