Needs Help: Separated By A Common Language

Separated by a Common Language is a mess. I think most examples might be accurate and that the trope itself is not misused. Buuut... Usually somebody mentions a word that causes confusion, e.g. the difference between "fit" in Br Eng and Am Eng. Then somebody adds that in another country it also means something else. Then — with another sub-bullets — somebody remembers how it was used in a book or on a show or how a fan fic confused the two. It's not reader-friendly at all.

It badly needs example sorting and some of the entries might count as natter, even though they usually have a point. Some are Zero Context Example or web links only.

There are now just two folders. English and other languages. No sorting according to media whatsoever.

I would fix something, but I'm not sure how I would even start. I brought this up in another thread link, and it was suggested that the page might be turning itself in Useful Notes page.

What do you say?

edited 30th Mar '13 1:56:28 PM by XFllo

That needs a hefty de-nattering.

May I propose the following bullet pointage?

• <Confusing word>
  • <Fist example>
  • <Second example>

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Example Indentation fix is really needed.

But I wonder - do we want to turn this into Useful Notes, or should the article focus on stuff from media?

From the title I was thinking this was something like Language Barrier, but it seems to be something like the inverse instead.

Another idea here is to cut the page back to work examples. As-is it comes off like an Useful Notes page for language errors.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

It's also possible to split it into on Useful Notes page, and one actual trope page.

edited 3rd Apr '13 10:51:19 AM by AnotherDuck

Check out my fanfiction!

Yes, I think the name is confusing as well.

I'd like to do this:

• First, make a useful notes on the confusing words, although it should have some appeal. Definitions could be useful. No troper-tales-like stories. However, such a list would be very long.
• Second, make a trope out of it, but properly. It would probably need to go through ykttw and collect examples. There might be instances where an American and a Brit meet, embarrassing or confusing each other with their language.

EDIT: Seems like we had a similar idea at the same time. ;-)

edited 3rd Apr '13 2:48:52 PM by XFllo

I would go for the simple route and just point people at some wiki page explaining dialectal differences. Saves us a lot of work.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

OK, in that case I think we could ditch the Useful Notes page thing, and make it in-universe. Only pity that lots of the contributions people made will be lost.

For instance, these examples are from media, and actually show how this trope is used.

• Russell Brand talks about an encounter with this trope in his New York comedy special, describing the time he was introduced to LL Cool J. "'Yo, yo, yo, wazzup my homies?'— 'Oh yes, you're wonderful. I love all your homos.'"
• 'Rubber', which in some places is an eraser, and in other places it's a condom. Emma Watson told David Letterman that she committed this infraction during her first semester at an American university, asking a male classmate for a rubber during class.

edited 3rd Apr '13 3:05:33 PM by XFllo

That is a pretty big pity. It's a topic that obviously has drawn interest from many tropers. Surely a split between Useful Notes and in-universe examples, as suggested above, would be better.

The interest in the topic is awesome. Nonetheless, the wiki's goal is to be concise, clear and witty representation of tropes in media. Conversation about it can go into discussion. Useful Notes page can be made. We haven's decided yet:-) But you must admit that the page is natterific and hard to read.

Then let's clean the natter. I'd be happy to help with that.

Cool.

It's been a while and no more comments so I am going to start editing the page with an eye to removing natter. Probably going to have to cut a lot out. It's my intention to leave as much as possible of the actual substance of the article.

This at the least seems like it can stay as a Useful Notes page but I wonder if there is possibility for a split between the Useful Notes page and a list wherein the trope is used as a trope, as characterization in fictional works. Said trope page would have to have some kind of note directing Real Life examples to the Useful Notes page—but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

EDIT: For now, I am going to leave in bona fide examples of this trope being used in-universe in fiction for humor or storytelling. For example, there's a legit in-universe example where Spike riffs on "randy" in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Should a decision be made to split off the trope page and the Useful Notes page in some way, those might be transferred.

edited 8th Apr '13 6:43:59 PM by gallium

Excellent. I think you could edit this in Sandbox.Separated By A Common Language and make two groups.

In-universe

Useful notes

I'll try to help as well.

Whew, that took a while. As I said above, I tried to take out natter, while preserving actual examples of words that have different meanings in the USA and Britain or elsewhere in the English-speaking world. There was a lot of stuff written in conversational mode or thread mode that I attempted to reduce or delete, and there was a lot of lecturing that wasn't strictly relevant to the trope, like a long entry about how the various dialects of German evolved from each other that did not contain any actual examples of individual German words that mean different things in Berlin or Vienna or whatever.

Anyway, I cut out a lot. Maybe someone else can look again and see what else could stand cutting, or add something back for that matter.

I like your idea of culling out the in-universe examples (which I did not do). Maybe we should seek more input on whether or not those should be listed in a different section on one page or there should be separate pages for Useful Notes and an in-universe trope example list.

Thank you for the purging. A cookie for you! :-)

I think we might need a crowner. I see the following possibilities:

• Leave it as is, but check frequently for natter
• Split into two parts: This trope used in media and in-universe, plus separate Useful Notes (which would include links to web pages dealing with this issue and those wicks collected by tropers so far)
  • Hard split — two separate pages (Useful Notes and In-universe/in media)
  • Soft split — both parts at one page
• Ditch Useful Notes and have only examples from media

Opinions? Do you see anything else what could be done about this?

What about the trope name? Is it OK? I agree with one previous comment that it might be fairly easy to mistake this for Language Barrier by the name.

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EDIT: I added some collapsible folders for more languages.

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Yeah, I hear you, I don't like the third option too much either, but it was brought up here before, so I thought I would mention it.

edited 12th Apr '13 6:58:06 AM by XFllo

I don't like Option #3; I'd rather keep the Useful Notes part of the page. Personally I lean towards a hard split between a Useful Notes page and an in-universe trope example page. I like the trope name fine but it wouldn't break my heart if the name got changed.

Haven't heard any other opinions on this topic so I went ahead and separated out the in-universe examples of this trope into a separate section atop the page. I also found a few more examples elsewhere on the wiki and added them, and I added an explanatory note.

Good work. Anyhow, given the size of the section, I would now be fine with writing a description for UsefulNotes.Separated By A Common Language and move the section over.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

You're absolutely amazing.

I slightly edited the in-universe section because Example Indentation looked a bit shaken, but nothing too big.

I kind of like the page right now, but I surely would not mind separating the useful notes and the trope as is used in-universe.

I'll go ahead and make the Useful Notes page then—just have to think of what to write for the introductory matter and then copy and paste. Anyone know a nice pithy quote to introduce the Useful Notes page with?

edited 26th Apr '13 7:56:06 AM by gallium

I have no ideas at the moment. But quotes are not necessary ;-) Perhaps somebody will come up with a good one later.

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I also moved more examples — I think pointing this out in talk shows and stand up comedy routines can be listed as sort of in-universe. I added to the header in fiction and in media.

However, when I was moving one wick, I realized that people often confuse it with other Language Tropes. Namely, Have a Gay Old Time, and I some time ago I remember moving some entries to My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels. Sometimes it may overlap, but the audience can't be too sure what the authors had in mind unless we have a Word of God.

edited 26th Apr '13 8:22:36 AM by XFllo

There you go. Useful Notes page created. Woot!

Set the page type on it. And I only wish I could make pages like that...

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman