The Adventures of Captain Peroxide and Deadboy
The Angel/Spike Zone of the BtVS Writer's Guild
Spike speak: It's just not British
by LouieXX
Spike doesn't speak British English. He speaks Englandish, an American's approximation of how us Brits speak, in the land of perpetual scones and tweed. Ah, sweet Englandland -the setting of films like Notting Hill and Bridget Jones, where it snows at Christmas, and no-one in West London is black.
Spike's outburst in "Tabula Rasa" is a prime example of this charming dialect.
"Oh, listen to Mary Poppins. He's got his crust all stiff and upper with that nancy-boy accent. You Englishmen are always so... Bloody hell! Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers, bollocks, oh God! I'm English!"
This is parody English - he's a sweary Dick Van Dyke. His speech is full of words that Brits would never [use, unless they were time travelers from the 1920s (this goes for Giles too — but that's a whole different can of balderdash and chicanery).
So, if you want to write authentic Spike, don't bother trying to be a true Brit. Just He back and think of Englandland.
On the other hand, the fact that Spike uses Americanisms ("ass" instead of "arse", for example) is perfectly natural. After all, he's a hundred-odd-year-old expat who spends his days watching American soaps. So. the transatlantic twang, really not surprising. Most British teenagers speak like characters from Dawson's Creek, so Spike is definitely forgiven his Linguistic Uncle-Tomism.
In fact, Spike's accent, you could say, is true to his character, if not his motherland - when he died, he gave himself a physical and verbal makeover. William was a posh Victorian, who loved Latinate polysyllables as much as he loved his darling Cecily. Spike is a construct, it's a costume the bloody awful poet created to escape his nancy boy roots-so if Spike's language is fake, well, so is he. I give him linguistic absolution