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Heaven: Well, They Sure Got THAT Wrong...

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  • Pronunciation of place-names can be a minefield!

    It's no wonder that some film/TV programmes get it wrong, but, if only the locals know that, for example, 'Trottiscliffe' is pronounced 'Trosley' (a village not far from here), one can hardly blame them.

    IJ
  • sabinesabine Shipmate
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    sabine wrote: »
    This is not from s film or novel...I lived in New Jersey when I was younger. Sometimes when I mention that, a person will jokingly say " you mean JOY'SEE."

    No I don't. It's never pronounced that way by locals.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! I also grew up in New JERsey, and get SO tired of that. When they say "you mean JOY'SEE," I respond, "No, I mean New JERsey."

    :rage:


    I think Joy'sey is something people think they've heard in TV or in films. It's a bad and incorrect rendition of an old fashioned Brooklyn accent. I doubt if anyone says Joy'sey.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Back in the Troubles, when there would be a higher than average incidence of Irish placenames on the news I have heard Mag Hera for Macher-AH, Clones for Clon-ES and A Hog Hill for AHauch’il. You would have thought they could have found one Ulster person in all of Broadcasting House.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Back to religion for a sec...

    In the movie Little Nicky, about a family of devils, Lucifer(Rodney Dangerfield) is worried about something, and is reassured by his son(Harvey Keitel) that everything is okay. Lucifer replies skeptically "The last time you told me everything was okay, the Renaissance happened!" The implication being that the Rennaisance would be a bad memory for Lucifer, presumbaly because of all the religious art now associated with it.

    Whereas, to the extent that Lucifer is conceived as being the guy with horns and a pitchfork, and that he would prefer one artistic epoch over another, he would LOVE the Renaissance, since as any high-school social-studies textbook will tell you, despite the superficially religious themes, it represented a departure from a God-centred view of the world to a man-centred one.

    The Reformantion would have worked better for that particular joke, but doesn't have the same recognizable pop-cultural cache.
  • I forgot about this.... Some years ago I was reading a novel about chess, a monk, Satan(?), and a modern investigator - sort of Dan Brown when DB was in short pants - I forget the title. Anyway, said investigator find a paper of some sort lodged between pages 33 and 34 of a book. Really? Between the recto and verso? Rather tightly lodged, I guess.
  • Hehehehehee...
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    I would like to add to that books that are "translated" into American English. I bought British editions of all of the Harry Potter books so I don't have to put up with that.

    Same here. (What the hell is a "sorcerer's stone"?)
  • I forgot about this.... Some years ago I was reading a novel about chess, a monk, Satan(?), and a modern investigator - sort of Dan Brown when DB was in short pants - I forget the title. Anyway, said investigator find a paper of some sort lodged between pages 33 and 34 of a book. Really? Between the recto and verso? Rather tightly lodged, I guess.
    Pedants should always beware of their behaviour used against them. Non-traditional folios are a thing, if an uncommon one.So the author didn't necessarily goof.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I forgot about this.... Some years ago I was reading a novel about chess, a monk, Satan(?), and a modern investigator - sort of Dan Brown when DB was in short pants - I forget the title. Anyway, said investigator find a paper of some sort lodged between pages 33 and 34 of a book. Really? Between the recto and verso? Rather tightly lodged, I guess.
    Pedants should always beware of their behaviour used against them. Non-traditional folios are a thing, if an uncommon one.So the author didn't necessarily goof.

    I'm wondering if that Dan Brown-ish book posited the existence of masonic conspiracies as a plot device, in which case there might be some significance to the number 33. (Not that that would neccessarily justify the piece of paper between 33 and 34, if it was meant to be a traditional folio.)
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    Perhaps he was thinking of Harry Potter, where the train departs from between Platforms 9 & 10? https://tinyurl.com/yb6enelz

    (Mind you, our local station has a Platform 0 - which is used: https://tinyurl.com/zb3pand).
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Firenze wrote: »
    ... You would have thought they could have found one Ulster person in all of Broadcasting House.
    Oh, but they did - the late, lamented John Cole.

    Before we moved to Belfast I made a point of listening to him, so that I could get used to the accent.

    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:
  • SarasaSarasa All Saints Host
    edited August 2018
    Almost every novel set in England and written by an American*. Everything burbles along happily, and then suddenly someone is putting cream in a cup of tea, or having a wedding and looking for a platoon of groomsmen, or using slang that's just a little bit off.

    Basically, it's a story that has been written in an American context, and then "translated" inexpertly into English. It's really quite hard to get the nuances of someone else's culture right.

    *this may be an exaggeration, but only just.

    My American writing tutor's main gripe about Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't the writing, but that Christian(?) said things no American would.


  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Not just Americans. Most of the passion-killing naff dialogue in Fifty Shades would reduce any of your usual deviant whip-loving couples to hysterical mirth.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    A magazine Woman or Woman's Own or something of that ilk, carried a regular "fashion problem" feature in which a two-page spread was devoted to solving someone's fashion problem. One week it featured a woman, allegedly from my part of Aberdeenshire, whose problem was that she lived in a remote part of Scotland, many, many miles from a clothes shop. She was fed up of travelling to Edinburgh to buy clothes and wondered if there was a solution? Somehow it appeared that she was unaware of the existence of Aberdeen city and its many, many clothes shops.

    (Just to clarify, neither I nor the other 449,999 inhabitants of Aberdeen city and shire walk around naked due to a lack of clothes shops in Aberdeen, or the towns in the Shire.)
  • Piglet wrote: »
    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:
    Well, you’ve taught me something, at least. I was always told “Worcester” is pronounced “Wooster,” and “Worcestershire” is pronounced “Woostershire.”

  • Just to clarify, neither I nor the other 449,999 inhabitants of Aberdeen city and shire walk around naked due to a lack of clothes shops in Aberdeen, or the towns in the Shire.
    No, it's far too cold and wet for that. And the Wee Frees wouldn't like it.

  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Piglet wrote: »
    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:
    Well, you’ve taught me something, at least. I was always told “Worcester” is pronounced “Wooster,” and “Worcestershire” is pronounced “Woostershire.”

    You are right as regards the place, but the sauce, though spelled Worcestershire, is always referred to as "Wooster sauce".
  • Well, not WOOster - it's a slightly more relaxed sound than that: ˈwʊstər in phonetic script.
  • Just to clarify, neither I nor the other 449,999 inhabitants of Aberdeen city and shire walk around naked due to a lack of clothes shops in Aberdeen, or the towns in the Shire.
    No, it's far too cold and wet for that. And the Wee Frees wouldn't like it.

    Quite so, but it conjured up for me a fleeting vision of The Biggest And Toughest Nudist Camp In The World....

    I'll get me Fig-Leaf, Coat, At, Wellies, Sou'wester etc. etc.
    Well, not WOOster - it's a slightly more relaxed sound than that: ˈwʊstər in phonetic script.

    Yes, I thought so too, but wasn't quite sure how to elucidate. Thanks, BT.

    IJ
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host, Glory
    Piglet wrote: »
    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:

    The Mater taught me that in earliest childhood. I remember correcting some of my classmates, circa 6th grade, who were saying "WOR-cess-ter-shire sauce," and being sneered at. (But, then, I often was.)



  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:

    And some of the smarty-pants cooks at a Fancy Restaurant™ where I worked a long time ago pronounced it Whatzissheer (What's this here) sauce. ;)
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Well, not WOOster - it's a slightly more relaxed sound than that: ˈwʊstər in phonetic script.

    And without the r at the end in a non-rhotic English accent. ˈwʊstə is how I say it.
  • Cathscats wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Piglet wrote: »
    My current bugbear about mispronunciation is North American TV chefs who can't pronounce "Worcestershire" as in the sauce. Someone really ought to explain to them that it's pronounced "Wooster", and the "shire" is silent. :mrgreen:
    Well, you’ve taught me something, at least. I was always told “Worcester” is pronounced “Wooster,” and “Worcestershire” is pronounced “Woostershire.”

    You are right as regards the place, but the sauce, though spelled Worcestershire, is always referred to as "Wooster sauce".
    Interesting. Do we at least get credit for pronouncing what’s written on the label correctly? (I guess there’s no point in asking why, if it’s “Wooster sauce,” the label doesn’t say “Worcester sauce” instead of “Worcestershire sauce. :wink:)

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    A few things that grate for me - I think I've mentioned some of these before:-

    - Scenes set in winter where under all the film snow, you can clearly see that all the deciduous plants are in full leaf.
    - C19 or C20 weddings in England where the vicar says 'you may now kiss the bride'. Doesn't anyone realise that this is a very recent innovation which people have only picked up from seeing it in films?
    - Most train stuff. One of the worst was a film from about 1950 where a train managed to change engines between appearing at one end of the platform and stopping at the other. And this wasn't even an example that it takes a train nerd to spot like a wrong livery. The first locomotive was conventional. It looked like a King Arthur. By the time it reached the other end of the platform it had transformed itself into an unrebuilt Bulleid Pacific.
    - Films set in the past where one can clearly hear a Collared Dove in the background.
    - Modern hairstyles designed to make the lead men and women look as sexy/fashionable as possible but which are wholly wrong for the period in which the film was set.
    - Ballroom scenes where everybody dances impeccably as though somebody has collected all their extras from competitors in Strictly or a corps de ballet. Yes, C19 people danced better than we do, but do you really believe that after a day in the hunting field and a certain amount of alcohol people were that good at it? Usually, also, their clothes are too bright. Dyes weren't that good then. Nor had detergents or dry cleaning been invented.
    - A scene in Call the Midwife set in a High Church convent around 1960 where there was a free standing altar designed for westward facing celebration. For a series set in a convent, the script-writer and props people really ought to have got that right.
    - Film adaptations of books that mangle the plot.


    Changing the subject and going back to Father Brown it's only an entertaining series if you mentally suspend all connection with reality. As has already been mentioned, it's set in the wrong period. Nor is that the social milieu in which the real fictional Father Brown operated. Even allowing for the few examples of upper class recusants, that wasn't the original Father Brown's world. Chesterton chose to write about an RC priest partly because he himself was a convert and so knew what he was writing about, and partly because in the 1910s/20s RC clergy were much more on the fringe of English life, but could go anywhere invisibly in a way CofE clergy who were much more embedded in the community couldn't.

    In the television series though, Father Brown is shown functioning in a world where it is as though the Reformation and the following four centuries never happened. The village church in a twee Cotswold village is RC. Everyone else, virtually, is RC. There isn't just a recusant lady of the manor, with a few Catholic tenants but the entire community - even the middle classes who've retired there, are all RC. Nowhere was like that in the early 1950s, and certainly not the Cotswolds, which weren't even a particularly recusant part of the country. The parish church would have been CofE. The squire probably would have been. He could well have been patron of the living. Depending on the village any dissent would have been Methodist, Congregationalist or Baptist.
  • Perhaps he was thinking of Harry Potter, where the train departs from between Platforms 9 & 10? https://tinyurl.com/yb6enelz

    (Mind you, our local station has a Platform 0 - which is used: https://tinyurl.com/zb3pand).

    [tangent] I got on and off it today, actually do quite regularly when visiting my parents. I thought you were in Wales. Here is a different angle of the same platform from last autumn [/tangent]
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    Whoops - I've got the wrong Platform 0!
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Enoch wrote: »
    - Modern hairstyles designed to make the lead men and women look as sexy/fashionable as possible but which are wholly wrong for the period in which the film was set.

    Who can forget Julie Christie in Far From The Madding Crowd in full-on Sixties Chick mascara and white lipstick?
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Firenze wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    - Modern hairstyles designed to make the lead men and women look as sexy/fashionable as possible but which are wholly wrong for the period in which the film was set.

    Who can forget Julie Christie in Far From The Madding Crowd in full-on Sixties Chick mascara and white lipstick?

    Dr Zhivago too.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    Jedijudy, I remember the 'wotsdiseresauce' joke in a Ronnie Barker book from years back.

    MMM

    Edited to add, changing the subject, that our local railway station now has a Platform 0. I assume they didn't want to call it platform 4 when it's next to platform 1.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Some years ago, I read a book recommended as light reading by a relative. It was a historical airport novel featuring a swashbuckling hero, and written in the first person. The book just did not work.

    What was wrong was that the hero just didn't think or perceive the world like a bloke. The writer was a woman. She had never been a bloke. the 'I' in the book might have done blokey things, had sword fights, seduced damsels, but he wasn't one. My relative who recommended the book was a woman and would not have been able to see this.

    I'm pretty sure it would be the same the other way round. If I read a book written by a man but supposed to be with a female 'I', it might not be obvious to me what was wrong, but I think it would be to a woman reader.

    So I'd say, if you are writing a novel and setting it in the first person, always choose a first person who is the same sex as you are.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Enoch wrote: »
    So I'd say, if you are writing a novel and setting it in the first person, always choose a first person who is the same sex as you are.

    I think you are talking about a failure to create a convincing character.

    I have read (albeit not for long) historical novels with a female protagonist, written by a woman. However much the heroine tells you she is a 19th C English spinster she is blazingly obviously a modern American urbanite (particularly in point of sexual behaviour).

    Nor is it confined to 1st person narration. Look carefully at your reading and I guarantee that virtually every novel with focus on the viewpoint of one character; he/she is your avatar in the story, and can strike a false note just as much as an ‘I’ narrator.
  • I read somewhere that Jane Austen never wrote dialogue between two men -- she had no idea how men spoke to each other when women were not around.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    I read somewhere that Jane Austen never wrote dialogue between two men -- she had no idea how men spoke to each other when women were not around.

    Growing up with six brothers I doubt she was a stranger to male conversation (my experience of siblinghood suggests sisters don’t count as audience).

    That she made the artistic decision to write the story from within the female viewpoint I find more believable (see remarks above about specific character focus).
  • TrudyTrudy Heaven Host
    Some writers are great at writing from the point of view of characters very different from themselves (in gender and in other ways); other writers, less so. There's no across the board rule on it. Writing historical fiction does pose a special challenge because you really do have to immerse yourself in the mindset of a different time period, and again, some writers are much better at this than others.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Talking of unrealistic character portrayal, I’ve observed in the last few years there’s been quite a trend for novels with autistic narrators written by non-autistic authors, and they often seem to follow a certain sort of narrative, along the lines of:
    I woke up at precisely 6:23am. I calculated this from turning my head a 90 degree angle to the right and seeing the neon green numbers on my Toshiba digital clock. Due to difficulty sleeping because of stress at work from my colleague Fred doing something non-symmetrical, this is seven minutes earlier than the average time I have woken up so far this year (there have been 233 days so far because it's a leap year). I keep a chart of it, along with the numbers of left turns and right turns I make in every journey, and the estimates I make of the body weight and age of every person I meet, because I have Aspergers and this is how we think.

    I am parodying and summarising a bit, but seriously, these novels go on and on in this way. These characters have no emotional depth, no sense of humour, but are more robotic figures of fun, or figures to be pitied - usually both. Now, I have Aspergers, I even like numbers, but this sort of thing is just... it’s nothing like me or anyone else I know on the autism spectrum. These characters are somehow not fully human!
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    I think stories and movies featuring pre-Vatican II Catholics might have a tendency to overestimate the importance of the Bible in Catholic culture of the time.

    In Quills, about the Marquis De Sade's imprisonment, a priest seeking to reform De Sade pulls a Bible from the Marquis' bookshelf and suggests that he read it for moral uplift. I don't think that would have been a priest's go-to choice for inspirational reading at the time. It IS indicated that De Sade, as a literary man, has some familiarity with the Bible, but it still strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

    In The Conspirator, about the trial of the woman convicted of assisting the assassins of Abraham Lincoln, her priestly consellor is shown as holding up a Bible to her lawyer and saying something to the effect of "This is what I base my morality on". While the Bible might indeed have been the source of the priest's morality(well, mediated through church fathers), I don't know if it's the book he would have brought to visit Mrs. Surratt in prison.

    Earlier in that movie, the same priest is shown as toting around a prayer book, possibly indicating the writers were aware that that would be his more likely choice of reading material.
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