i mean, it’s a british series set in britian by a british author with british characters speaking british english. why would they be saying ‘parking lot’ instead of ‘car park’? that doesn’t make sense!
and even at 8 i don’t think i was so stupid that i couldn’t figure out what an ice lolly was from context clues. furthermore, context clues are important for children to learn, not to mention dialects in general.
plus it seemed very inconsistent? some of the obvious slang they’d change but they’d leave in stuff like ‘trainers’ or ‘snogging’ in the US versions which confused me even more as a child because i was used to being spoon-fed the US vocab – which doesn’t immerse you in the setting as much and get you used to hearing the slightly different words as often.
Imo there was no reason at all. I’m Canadian and I had the UK version. I figured things out just fine and if I couldn’t, I asked!
I once tried to download the ebooks but accidentally got the US version. It absolutely ruined the immersion, and the arbitrary word replacements seemed to get lazier and lazier further into the series.
To not confuse US kids with spelling and the like?
Not sure though, would have been awesome if they left as-is and added foot notes or cliff notes for US version.
Because ‘Fitch punting kids across the swamp that the Weasleys created in the hall’ had nothing to do with kicking kids.
the proper spelling of colour and neighbour
but for real i switch to the us version of the audiobook because jim dale > stephen fry (i just like how jim does more character work)
I prefer Fry, actually. I find Dale’s reading a bit too intense, whereas Fry is much more relaxed.
It’s common in the US to do this.
A lot of older David Attenborough documentaries were dubbed over with an American narrator when they aired on US television.
The kids TV show Bob the Builder also got dubbed over in US English. It wouldn’t surprise me if many Americans thought it was a US show.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series of books was originally obviously in British English, yet in the US they published with US English.
Tolkien got pissed off about publishers in the US Americanising his works and introducing things he didn’t like (e.g. they originally tried to change Elves to Elfs and Dwarves to Dwarfs).
And it’s not just dubbing over or changing text, it also extends to the US making entire US versions of UK shows - Shameless, the Office, Taskmaster, Top Gear, Peep Show, Bad Education, Broadchurch, Fawlty Towers, Porridge, The Young Ones, IT Crowd, Red Dwarf, etc. many of these don’t pan out, though, because the scripts and characters don’t always work when you uproot them and put them into a different culture, so-to-speak.
I’m really not sure why it’s the case. Other Anglosphere countries seem to consume US content just fine.