Americanization

[Skimmel_98 at yahoo.com]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C550
From: Skimmel_98
Subject: Americanization
Reply To: [Yahoo! #543] Re: Typo?  I think not...
Date: 3/2/00 8:44 am  (ET)

For the most part I agree with you. I'm reading Prisoner aloud to my
youngest daughter and she isn't having any problem with the items that
have slipped through or are in other books. The whole premise, a boarding
school for wizards is a lot more alien to most American kids than using
"trunk" instead of "boot" or "cookie" instead of "biscuit."

There is one area I wish they would have Americanized a bit more. I
absolutely HATE it when authors write is dialect. (Its not really an issue
of Americanization. I hated it when Mark Twain did it too.) Hagrid is
the worst in the Potter books. And a drunken Hagrid is worse still. The
crew of the Night Bus were also bad. There have been times when I had
to stop the flow of the story to sound it out what they were saying a
couple times.

I can't see that it adds anything. Would the story have lost anything
if Hagrid simply spoke plain, simple English? Rowling could have shown
us his nature without resorting to dialect.