British V American

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 101850

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Nrsedany2be at a... wrote:
> Whenever I read the books I always hear a British/Irish/Scottish
accent in my 
> mind, just depends on the character speaking. My mom was from
England, so I'm 
> used to it. When I first heard there was 2 versions of the book, I
was like 
> that was so wrong. Because I truly felt they were taking from the
story, even 
> in the first book they changed things like mum to mom. I read the
American 
> versions but when I can afford them, I want the British versions.
Has listened to 
> the British version on tape love Stephen fry. I know there is one
thing that 
> had been changed in OOPT and the was take the mickey out of it.
Apparently the 
> British version, haven't read yet have been on hold at local library
since 
> last summer for it, has a reference that is considered vaguely
sexual in the 
> US???? 
> Danielle D.

Annemehr:

There is, and more than vaguely sexual -- but only in the US, not
Britain. At the top of Scholastic OoP, p. 227, Fred and George are
telling Harry and Hermione how tough OWL year is, and George says
"Fred and I managed to keep our spirits up somehow." That sentence in
the UK editions reads: "Fred and I managed to keep our peckers up
somehow," which means the same thing, "peckers" meaning "hearts," but
obviously Scholastic wasn't going to print that!

Should you care to peruse the other differences between versions of
OoP, they are catalogued in the HP Lexicon at:

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/differences-op.html

which shows the differences between the first four also. Most of those
changes make me angry, too, since they're merely a matter of style --
as in dropping "whilst" for "while."  As soon as OoP is out in UK
paperback, I'm ordering the set of all five.  Or, I could just use the
Lexicon to annotate and correct my Scholastic versions... nah, too
much work!

Annemehr
who can read English just fine, thankyouverymuch