Hi Dark, Well, I wouldn't say it is so much a matter of forgetting the rest of the world exists, but more the fact we have a tendency of borrowing ideas from other countries and somehow making it uniquely our own thing. We do this with everything weather it is food, books, games, you name it. Someone sees it and then comes back to the USA and comes up with his or her own version of it. The idea is original enough but the end result often turns out to be quite a bit different than the original thing he/she was trying to copy.
For example, let's take the topic of pizza. During the late 1800's and early 1900's I've heard there was a large amount of Italian imigrants who came to New York City and many of them opened restaurants selling Italian food. Perhaps the most popular was true Italian pizza. Unlike the American version of pizza we have now these pizzas were square, thin crust pizzas, baked in a brick oven, and were just sauce and cheese. What we think of as New York style pizza today. However, pizza became a very popular hit with New Yorkers and it wasn't long before American restaurant owners started creating their own versions of pizza, and it began to become popular all over the country. In very quick order restaurants stopped making square pizzas and made them round like a pie, and started experimenting with all sorts of toppings and sauces. In Chicago one restaurant owner, I don't remember the guys name, decided to make the worlds first deep dish pizza with a thick crust and several layers of meet and cheese. This became known as Chicago style pizza because it was first created in Chicago. Thus we borrowed the idea of pizza from the Italian imigrants who came to New York, setup shop, but American restaurant owners decided to take the idea and make it something more uniquely American. Same thing could be said for Mexican food. There are hundreds of Mexican restaurants all over the country, but most of them don't really sell original Mexican food. Instead it is Americanized Mexican food. I have actually eaten some true Mexican food and I can say it totally taistes nothing like Taco Bell or any of the other Mexican restaurants that try and pass themselves off as Mexican. For one thing different spices etc which totally changes the flavor of the food, and I have eaten some true Mexican hot tamales so hot it felt like I swallowed a blow torch. Fact of the matter is most Americans aren't use to eating food quite that spicy and hot, and so the Taco Bell's of the world make a plane facsimile of Mexican dishes with their name on it. Anyway, the point is as a culture we just take ideas, borrow them, and somehow make them our own. Change them to suit our taistes or personal likes/dislikes. This is obviously what happened to Harry Potter. It was too British for the publishers and they wanted to Americanize it to suit an American audience. In fact, I've read this was one reason Harry Potter got a very slow start in the U.S. Harry Potter came close to never being published at all, because it didn't fit in with the kinds of childrens books that were being published at the time. For example, before Harry Potter became a big name block buster publishers didn't think they could sell it to an American audience. They clamed that an orfened boy, growing up in a disfunctional house hold, going off to boarding school wasn't something that would be of any interest to parents and children. To say nothing of the fact it delt with magic which was being regarded as off limits in a childrens book. To put it bluntly the kind of book Joanne Rowling was selling was taboo for a lot of reasons. Remember at the time Harry Potter came on the scene the dust was just beginning to settle down after R. L. Stine's Goose Bumps series came out in the early to mid 90's. The Christian right, as usual, were suing schools, libraries, etc trying to get such books banned and/or removed. The end result of the Christian rights' hell raising was that publishers had decided to begin turning down books dealing with magic and other themes dealing with the super natural. The only thing was that Harry Potter was becoming so popular in England American publishers had to take notice eventually. Scolastic paid eventually paid something like $105,000 for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone which was unheard of for any childrens book before that. They believed they had commited financial suicide, but within a year it would be on the New York Times best seller list So I guess what I'm saying here is that the entire Harry Potter series got off on the wrong foot in the U.S. to begin with. There were so many misconceptions, fears, and worries that it wouldn't sell that they did everything possible to market it to an American audience. By doing so Americans do what they always do we take something and make it our own even if our version isn't exactly like the original version. Cheers! On 3/5/11, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Selecting American English? ---- that's absolutely mad! > > i will say though that I have rather noticed a tendency from some people, > companies and agencies in the Us to forget that the rest of the world > exists, in fact it can be quite irritating over here when American companies > or people forget that that not everyone is part of the us or uses the same > language. > > For instance, I saw an add the other day talking about "home movies" which > is certainly not a term we use over here. > > Even words liek Jerk, dorc, or geek which are sometimes used in adds tend to > not be used by people on the street, just on tv. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.