Hm…
Well there is at least one American to whom that looks very strange. :dubious:
Ah well.
Um, those are just plural nouns. The collective issue would come up with something more like “No Doubt is playing the Garden tonight” (US) vs “No Doubt are playing the Garden tonight.”(UK) In the US it’s a singular since doubt is singular, but in the UK it’s plural since it consists of a group of people.
In regards to saoirse’s example, is pecker not slang for penis outside the US? If it is in the UK too, that must be confusing…
Pecker can be slang for penis, but “keeping one’s pecker up” is unrelated. Context is everything.
Same here, but for me it was first when I was reading Winnie the Pooh and Piglet gets really excited at seeing Christopher Robin’s blue braces. Took me years to figure that one out, cause I was like 7. And I refused to ask my parents.
Bill Bryson, an Iowan by birth who’s lived as much of his adult life in England as in the US, tends to write with Briticisms and has frequently had them reproduced in American editions.
Nothing horrendously obvious - he calls a truck a truck, a trunk a trunk, and a zucchini a zucchini - but every now and then he’ll say something “doesn’t make any odds” or talk about a retiree’s “leaving party,” and I’ll think, “How veddy British he is.”
But “Beatles” is a plural sounding word (it ends in “s”). “The Beatles are…” “The Who is…” “The Nuggets are…” “The Heat is…” “Arsenal is …” (they’re a team, aren’t they?)
Took me a long time when I was younger to figure out why people kept running around with torches - weren’t their parents afraid of them getting burnt or setting something on fire? My parents never let me run around with a torch, they barely let me use matches. Maybe they didn’t have electricity…
Hehehe, yes, us is very backward here. 
As for me, I thought it was interesting to read of things like a “two story house”. All right, a house constructed of stories has a certain appeal, if a lack of practicality … it’s “storey” here, you see. Still, though I regret the lack of these houses of stories.
btw - I like "torch better than “flashlight” because, after all, most of the time I need a torch/portable light source, it would be pretty annoying if it insisted on flashing on and off all the time.
At one point I read the first book in the series in French. (In hopes of improving my French, and after reading it in English.)
This will shed no light whatsoever on British versus Americanisms, but imagine my delight and shock to find out that:
The item supplied to Harry by Mr. Ollivander on Diagon Alley was a… baguette.
That’s right. A magic wand in French is a baguette.
Now I am deeply respectful of the story, which entranced me, and don’t want to introduce snickering if anyone else is feeling respectful, but I couldn’t help imagining Voldemort cracking infant Harry over the forehead with it, and leaving impressions of sesame seeds.
Also, the Latin in the French version had to be squiggled with a bit, because French is a Latin-based language. It makes perfect sense to underage readers in English or American to cry out “Expecto Patronum”, because they expect their patron. In French it had to be “Espero Patronum”, because Expecto is… well… expectorate.
Spit me a Patronum over here, will ya Harry? And crack me over the head with a French bread while you’re at it.
Ah… I see. My problem was that I was thinking in terms of what the words symbolized rather than what the words were. To my mind, the Clash and the Beatles aren’t substantitally different; they are both groups of people who play instruments, and as such, should be treated the same gramatically. The idea of saying “New York is one of the best teams in baseball,” but “The Yankees are one of the best teams in baseball,” seemed kind of unusual, considering that it is a group of people being referred to in both cases, and the same group of people at that. But I now see how the American system works - I guess it’s just a matter of how you think about it.
This site lists differences between the UK and US HP books. Just pick a book and then pick the “differences” or “edit” links. Here it is for the first book.
Although I wouldn’t argue that the US way is superior, it seems to me that the UK way is more complicated since which form you use is contingent on knowing if a noun is meant to represent a single person or a group. How do you deal with cases where you don’t know if a musical act is a solo artist or a group?
Supposing you don’t (and you might not) don’t know if the following are groups or solo acts, how do you decide which form of to be to use?
Aqualung
Biff Naked
Bettie Serveert
Bleu
Bright Eyes
The Buffseeds
Astaire
Dakona
Depswa
Elwood
Enon
Frou Frou
Finest Dearest
Finch
Kent
A US speaker only has to know how many people are in one of those (Bright Eyes) in order to get them right.
elfkin477 - point taken, though I think you’re overstating the complexity issue. In general speech, I would stick with what the name suggests, (generally I would assume a band name refers to a group of people,) even though I could be wrong, and definitely would be with some of the examples you’ve given. But these situations would be pretty rare - usually if you’re talking about something, you know whether there are one or many people involved.
I figure there are few elements of language that really are superior to other nation’s alternatives, so Americaners should stick with what they feel comfortable doing and everyone else should do the same. I’m just pleased to have worked out the secret to the American system.
I was going to chime in and point out that most of us stupid merkins know what a philosopher is. However, since I haven’t read the book, I have to ask about the philosopher/sorcerer in question. Does he have magical powers? Because, to my mind, a philosopher is someone that just sits around thinking, while a sorcerer is someone with magical powers. So if the p/s in question has magical powers, then the change might be justified.
Also, in my world, a pecker is almost always a penis, and a pot plant is something that causes otherwise-respectable men to run over innocent pedestrians (I saw it in a documentary about marijuana). So I can see the justification in those changes as well.
[QUOTE=gabriela} <snip>
Now I am deeply respectful of the story, which entranced me, and don’t want to introduce snickering if anyone else is feeling respectful, but I couldn’t help imagining Voldemort cracking infant Harry over the forehead with it, and leaving impressions of sesame seeds.[/QUOTE]
Surely not, a french baguette with sesame seeds? A light dustuing of flour at the most. If Harry had teh marks of a sesame seed they would assume he had been attacked with a (le) Big Mac (or is it la?)
There is no philosopher in the story. And although there are a lot of wizards, I don’t remember any of them being referred to as a “sorceror.” The reference is to a mythical substance, the philosopher’s stone.
I see. In that case, that change is stupid. Like referring to “rockhenge”.
I think that the other 2 changes are justified, though.
Don’t be silly. Any time I can imagine literary characters hitting each other with baguettes, I’m happy. You just can’t go wrong with that.
We’re just now reading Order of the Phoenix with our son. Part of it takes place at Christmas, and the characters all say “Merry Christmas” to each other. Isn’t the British custom to say “Happy Christmas”? Was that changed for the American market, perhaps?
I think the two phrases are now interchangeable and I have heard both over here.