[HPforGrownups] British -> American "Translation"

[John Walton]

No: HPFGUIDX 10137

Jim Flanagan wrote:

> There is only one *tiny* justification for the translation from
> British into American that I have seen: some fine points of grammar
> are different enough that American teachers would "count off" if
> their students used the British forms in class.  Here's an example
> from PS/SS:
> 
> British:  "Slytherin are on the offensive"
> American: "the Slytherins are on the offensive"
> 
> Maybe Scholastic has done a service by "correcting" the original
> version for American kids. Would any teachers (or students) care to
> comment?

Interesting differences there...as a student of Linguistics, I can happily
say that this is one of the "problem areas" in modern grammar, not just in
the US, but in the UK too.

Pedantically and didactically, the correct usage would be "Slytherin is".
Last I checked, however, both "Slytherin is" and "Slytherin are" would be
appropriate in both the US and UK (this from V. Fromkin and R. Rodman, "An
Introduction to Language", published in the USA and my coursebook for
Linguistics). A similar example would be "the committee is/are". There are
half a dozen or so non-specific ones in use, and then you can make a
singular group noun out of any group of people. "Apple Computer is/are",
"the Board of Directors is/are", "England [Football Team] is/are" etc.

You see this problem also when people unwilling to use the "he/him/his"
pronouns as a generic unspecified pronoun use "they/them/their" instead:

"If any student has a problem with this, he (they) should present his
(their) case to the Assistant Dean."

It's clearly grammatically wrong, yet it's used everyday. Hay, whoo kneads
grammar?

--John

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John Walton     john at walton.to

One Person, One Vote (may not apply in certain states)
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