*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

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Don't know, but you might want to ask on hp_britglish. :)

[caia-comica.livejournal.com]

Well, in all my time as a student in American public schools, I've never seen this usage, although I can't say it doesn't exist *anywhere* over here. The usual way of addressing a female teacher where I come from would be as Mrs. (or sometimes Miss or Ms.) Smith (or whatever her last name is).

My *guess* would be that it's a consequence of someone trying way too hard to sound "British" and winding up with something that, I think, would be pretty archaic on either side of the Atlantic.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

In American schools (with younger students especially), it's not unusual for a student to say "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am"/"Yes, sir" or "No, sir" in reply to an adult. But this is probably regional--in the South or Midwest one definitely hears this.

[ratcreature]

Could be. I think I connect the "Ma'am" thing with the US because it really freaked me out that people addressed me that way when I was on vacation there. I mean, I didn't even react to it the first time it happened, because I was quite certain the freaky formal address must be meant for somebody else, like some old lady behind me or something... Certainly nobody ever called me "Ma'am" when I was in the UK.

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

In British schools, you tend to use 'Miss'. Even if she's married. Male teachers are called 'Sir'. It's considered sucking up to use the full name - it implies you care enough about them to have actually bothered learning their name.

I've never heard 'Ma'am' used.

[ratcreature]

It's considered sucking up to use the full name

Wow, that's certainly different from here. But then in German you can't really address people without using their last name, I think it would be kind of like calling someone "Mister" in English without a name attached. Here you call teachers "Frau ..." or "Herr ..." with their last names (the German equivalent of "Miss" isn't really used much anymore), and address them as "Sie", while they use your first name and address you as "Du." Though at least in my school (and from what I've heard in most others too) in the year most students turn sixteen the teachers begin to address you as "Sie" from then on (that's the general etiquette, that once you turn sixteen you have the right to not be addressed as "Du" anymore as people do with children), though usually the "Sie" was still combined with the first name, while as a student you used "Sie" and last name for the teacher. Some teachers even offered students the "Du" so that from then on you could call those teachers by their first name in return, though not everybody was comfortable with that kind of familiarity with teachers. I guess having an informal and a polite version of "you" makes everything more complicated... *g*

[tazlet.livejournal.com]

I found it odd being addressed as 'Ma'dam' by veddy, veddy frafly British shop keepers when I was 28.

[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.

[lcsbanana.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's certainly different from here. But then in German you can't really address people without using their last name, I think it would be kind of like calling someone "Mister" in English without a name attached.

...wait, so how do you address someone respectfully whose name you don't know? Like, customer service, "may I help you, sir?" That kind of thing. Do you not do that?

[ratcreature]

The polite "you" i.e. "Sie" takes care of that automatically. It's the polite way to address a stranger or someone in a formal relationship, opposed to the informal "Du". There is quite an amount of social etiquette around when which form is appropriate, who is allowed to offer the less formal form of address first etc. In customer service for example, you'd simply say "Kann ich Ihnen helfen?" without a name. That is respectful if you don't know the name, there is no need to add anything to be more polite. Whereas you'd ask "Kann ich Dir helfen?" if you know the person well. In English both "Ihnen" and "Dir" would be "you".

Ma'am in UK

[mofic.livejournal.com]

In England you call the queen ma'am!

Re: Ma'am in UK

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

When I met her, I called her a pathetic old biddy.

Unfortunately, I didn't get up the courage to actually say it to her face. Damn. What a wasted opportunity.

(Dinner on the Britannia. Yawnfest.)

Miss! Miss! I know!

[dodyskin.livejournal.com]

Hi, I can't work out exactly where you are from so apologies if this is all stuff you know. I was betting on American or German because you use US spellings but that's not always a perfect indicator. Anyway, on terms of address in England (not Britain)
When I was at school I called all the female teachers Miss, regardless of their marital status, and all male teachers Sir. The thing to try and imagine is these terms being used as a name, not a term of respect. Children say Sir in the same way they might say Darren, or Sarah. Younger (primary school) children generally use the full name of their teacher, although random spinsterising--Miss [insert surname] is more common. Public school (by which I mean private but dating from at least before the twentieth century) have individual and eccentric terms. Some of the most common are: master, high master, sir, mistress, governess, miss, tutor. Female police superintendants and some army officers are addressed as Ma'am, as is the Queen. Madam is a (slightly Are You Being Served) form of address used in shops and occasionally on the phone. In a normal corner shop or chippy or suchlike you will probably get a love, darling, sweetness or miss if you are a woman. You will be referred to as lady--somebody serve that lady. Men have slightly different rules. You will be referred to as love, cock (in the north only) sir, mate or sunshine and referred to as gentleman or lad. There are various regional terms but they're the big ones. For example: in some shops in Lancashire you might be called a mess of bollocks, but that's a quirk that raises eyebrows everywhere but there.

Re: Miss! Miss! I know!

[ratcreature]

Thanks for the overview. I think the main reason why the "ma'am" grated on me was really that regardless of possible British conventions under special circumstances, the students in the HP books *don't* address their teachers like that. I've checked since I posted this, and couldn't find a single instance where they do. The students address both male and female teachers as "Professor" sometimes with their last names after the honorific, but often without. The female staff who aren't professors are "Madam Pomfrey" and "Madam Hooch."

The house elves use "sir" a *lot,* but the children not that much that I could find, it seems certainly less common than "Professor." I did find a couple of conversations where students address male teachers as "sir" though not female teachers as "Miss" -- usually it's the female students who are addressed as "Miss ..." -- overall honorifics of any kind don't have to be inserted in every other sentence by Hogwarts students in student teacher conversations.

BTW, I'm German (you may notice the predilection towards long, convoluted sentences that I have to curb a lot *g*). I learned British English in school, and American spelling variants were marked as error then, and American pronunciation was frowned upon (which kind of sucked for those of my classmates who had spent a year as exchange students in the US and found the practice highly unfair, but I digress), but I switched to US conventions since then, because it's the more common global variant in fandom, and I see US spelling more often, so it's less confusing for me overall.

Re: Miss! Miss! I know!

[dodyskin.livejournal.com]

Huh, really? All of the other German people I know use American spellings except for the bloke I used to live next door to and that's because he's thoroughly Anglicised. I must have just got a weird skew--it's funny how you can do that about countries. I confess, although I have read the HP books I am not a part of the fandom. I like them (although the abbreviation screams 'sauce' to me) and everything but I'm totally esconced in the Buffyverse. I seem to have a fair few HP fans on my reading list though, for one reason or another. Actually I was checking out your journal because you were on a list I joined today called Fanfic Crit or something. I want to learn how to give better critcisms/reviews of fic so I thought I'd join it. All the posts seem to be about LJ which is odd, but interesting. Hello, anyway.

Re: Miss! Miss! I know!

[ratcreature]

It might depend on from where the people are. I'm from Hamburg, and besides this being the former British occupation zone (which made a difference in the school curricula at least for quite some time, like in that lots of schools in the French zone French was the first foreign language and such), there are longstanding close ties to England, and generally British stuff seemed to have a much better image than things coming from the uncouth US hooligans... *grin*

Also the English teacher I had longest actually was an older Englishwoman, who had little tolerance for any US traces in English, that is the only concession she was willing to make was to allow a student who had moved to Hamburg from Seattle and had spent several years in the US school system in both elementary and high school to use American English. But then that student spoke US English more or less as her first language (according to her she spoke it better than Korean anyway), so the teacher could hardly expect her to switch over to British. All my other English teachers studied English in the UK and pretty much agreed in their loathing of the US variant, though there were degrees to that. The worst reaction to using US English (in particular colloquialisms) was kind of like being treated like Neville in potions class by Snape. *g*

About FCA-L (glad you found my LJ btw *wave*), well, the list has been rather quiet, with short bursts of activity, and there isn't a regular criticism thing going on, like a book discussion group or anything like that, so if you just wait for fanfic reviews to appear it most likely won't happen. However if you start a thread about fanfic/fanfic reviews the chances are good people will join in, especially if the fandom isn't too obscure, or if your post is more "meta-fandom" like in general about fanfiction reading and discussion rather than anything very fandom specific. Like you saw with the LJ thread that was also more about cross-fandom trends and such.