*grumble*

[ratcreature]

I'm really not that picky about British vs. American English in Harry Potter fanfic (a lot of the time I don't even notice, it's not like I could always tell for sure which words belong to which variety), but right now I'm reading a story that I would enjoy quite a lot if Harry wasn't addressing his female teachers as "Ma'am" all the time, which to me sounds really American, and I don't recall it being used in the books at all. I don't have copies of the books at hand (I just borrowed them from my sister when I read them), so I could be wrong, but I don't think so. "Ma'am" to address teachers and such is American, right?

Comments

[buggery.livejournal.com]

It is indeed regional. There's a cute story about a girl who moved from Georgia, deep in the American South, to Connecticut, located between New York and Boston in the northeast. Her first day at her new school, she answered the teacher's question "yes, sir," and the entire class of 11- and 12-year-olds cracked up.