Phew! (Whew!)

Dwight Decker deckerd at agcs.com
Fri Feb 3 19:38:06 CET 1995


DAVID:
	Well, your feeble old grampaw could have been sadly mistaken all
these years, or maybe it's a matter of personal preference, but the
way I see it is this--

"Phew, you stink!"
"Whew, what a relief!"

The Danish writers writing in English I've seen invariably use "phew"
as a sigh of relief, which sounds wrong to my ear, so I generally
change it to "whew." Your mileage may vary, of course. 

Now, where I _really_ draw the line is things like "Grrr!," "Bah,"
and "Wak!" Those all seem to me like Things To Say When You Can't
Think Of Anything Else To Say. Where word balloon space allows, I
try to substitute something a little more eloquent. Seems to me that
the story reads better when the character is actually saying something
as opposed to just grunting or snorting. But that's personal preference.

Not sure what you mean by scripts written in "British English." What
I've seen are scripts written in non-native English by Danes and Swedes.
Sometimes they're amazingly good with their use of American slang and
colloquialisms, but other times some misunderstood expression gives
them away (such as a reference to "the windshield factor" in cold 
weather, or Scrooge telling his secretary to "keep the castle" while
he's gone -- "hold the fort" was what was meant). One Swedish writer
gives himself away every time by spelling the name of a certain town 
as "Duckborg."

--Dwight




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