#British and American English

[petermorwood]

A day or so ago, @dduane reblogged a long post - a Canadian magazine article from 1966 - about the Americanisation of Winnie the Pooh.

It's an Impressive Tirade in which the writer (Sheila H. Kieran) says what she thinks about letting Walt Disney have a free hand with a foreign Children's Classic.

There's mention of the previous Adaptation Endeavour, "Mary Poppins" (1964) but it's very brief, perhaps with an eye to limited column space - or maybe because All Was Said Already in a previous review.

There is, however, rather a lot about the English characters being given American accents, and about the inclusion of a new character, an American gopher (which, the article suggests, looked vague enough to the Kieran children - its target audience - that it might as well have been a mole or a beaver).

*****

And that reminded me of another bit of American Animalisation done by Disney, in the 1949 short "The Wind and the Willows" - though in this instance it's visual since the voices are, for the most part, suitably British.

They include Basil Rathbone as narrator, and a horse who sounds like George Formby. In some scenes the horse actually looks like Formby, so this voice may not be entirely accidental.

Badger, however, sounds like a Scotsman - the worst kind of stage Scotsman at that - rather than how I used to "hear" him as a C. Aubrey Smith-voiced crusty retired colonel.

That, however, is just personal preference.

However, Disney's Badger is not a proper British (more correctly, European) badger, Meles meles. Here's one, which though not the most amiable of beasts in reality, still manages to look fairly affable ("I say, old chap, whatever are you looking at?")

Instead he's a North American badger, Taxidea taxus, which not only has a less affable expression ("Hey, bud, you. Yeah, you. You lookin' at me? You lookin' at ME?") but, more important, different stripes.

Here's Disney's version alongside mine. The correction took about five minutes of pixel-tweaking.

Disney's animators could have got it right from the outset just as easily, because I'm pretty sure the reference library which provided costume info for Rat's tweed Norfolk jacket and britches included picture-books of natural history.

Come to that, any "The Wind in the Willows" after the unillustrated first edition would have been enough, and there must have been at least one copy lying around for story adaptation and scene-description purposes.

The first illustrated edition came out in the UK in 1931, and its artist was, at author Kenneth Graham's request, the very same E.H. Shepard who had illustrated the Pooh books just a few years previously...

...while this Arthur Rackham colour plate is from an edition published in 1940 in New York.

So those books wouldn't have been impossible for Disney to get.

The problem, however, is that if a word ("badger", for instance) is well known to mean one thing here, it may be Too Much Trouble to find out if the same word means something else there, with the result that finding out can sometimes come as rather a surprise.

Check the UK / US meaning of "suspenders" to see what I mean... ;->

[elt]

@neil-gaiman did that actually happen to you? Pretty funny nevertheless

[f-misc]

Lee Byung-hun:

"When acting, it felt natural to start paying attention to Gi-hun. It seemed like the obvious thing to do. Because I was also a winner, and so was he. As we both went through that process, I believed it was inevitable that thoughts of hopelessness toward humanity and the world would naturally arise. And I thought such pessimistic views were only natural. Yet, seeing Gi-hun turn around and re-enter to destr​oy this system drew my attention. I found myself naturally keeping an eye on him. But when I joined as a fellow participant, I observed him from the sidelines. And perhaps, even the Frontman might have hoped that, since he's human too, Gi-hun's words would be right. I acted while thinking that maybe, deep down, there was a part of him cheering for Gi-hun."

[batarangsoundsdumb]

i know at this point i shouldn't be surprised at nationalism- but why is it so obvious in the wikipedia/google intro blurb of bicultural & multicultural celebrities.

[illustratus]

Isolation: The Mayflower becalmed on a moonlit night by Montague Dawson

[agelessphotography]

Animal Locomotion, Plate 637, Eadweard Muybridge, 1887

[ilovefredjones]

imagine being shazad latif. you get cast in a star trek show. you’re the main character’s love interest. the writers severely fuck your character over. you try your best, but his potential is wasted. you get written out after s2. the next love interest they introduce is shirtless in his first ever scene, and, perhaps an even worse blow, gets to keep his accent

[oifaaa]

Would you rather be british or french

Haven't I answered this before? French the foods nicer the weather's better and it's still apart of the eu

[lesbianslovenamari]

I was reading DunMeshi and was so confused by this phrase that I decided to look it up

(Do correct me if you think this isn’t accurate cuz I just used google)

But I find it frankly hilarious that Chilchuck is using slang from various parts of the British Isles out of nowhere in the last volume??

(I’ve now had someone explain to me that apparently it’s not uncommon for certain uncommon types of informal Japanese to be translated as slang from specific areas, typically around Britain, in English)

First of all I’d alr seen people jokingly headcanoning him as Irish on here (which was an idea I absolutely love)

ALSO I come from a part of the UK where I’m very familiar with the term ‘git’ but had never heard of a version with an e and I also had no idea it meant the same as ‘bastard’

(I have considered that this could just be the regular meaning of the word ‘get’ but I thought it wouldn’t grammatically make sense here so I assumed it was slang esp cuz he would totally call someone a git)

Anyways I’ve checked other translations and it’s not the same so I find it so funny that this one (which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation) included it

(^ another version I found online)

Anyways this is the translation I have and used as an example for this post, which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation:

Edit: Btw also check tags I kinda wrote this when I was drunk on sleep deprivation

[makeallthewindowsglass]

As someone who never used TikTok (no hate tho) my honest first reaction to the TikTok ban was “oh noooo how will Phil show Dan all his favorite TikToks again :((( I love that series” then I remembered that they are British and this does not affect them

[sonicandvisualsurprises]

1967

Lee Moses crafts a soulful and gritty instrumental take on The Beatles' classic 'Day Tripper,' infused with his powerful guitar work.

This was the B-side of his Four Top cover Reach Out I'll Be There.

The original was released in

1965

[i-am-aprl]

It quiz time 😎

Let's play a game 😁

[this-vs-that]

This question was sent to our inbox. If you’d like for us to post a This or That poll for you, send the 2 things you want to see against each other to our inbox and we’ll let the people decide which one they prefer. Everything will be anonymous.

[yespraetor]

Percy Jackson meets Harry Potter:

Percy Jackson: Hey man I am showing you my favorite thing!

Percy Jackson: *taking out a bottle of water*

Percy Jackson: Pronounce it!

[illustratus]

Mayflower II on her sailing trials in the waters off Brixham, South Devon, April 1957 by Montague Dawson

[agelessphotography]

Mirror Lake, Valley of the Yosemite, Eadweard Muybridge, 1872