Linguistics

[resonant]

I'm compiling an American-to-British phrasebook (because reasons Sherlock). You can find decent dictionaries online (nappy, lorry, etc., etc.) but I'm not so much finding speech patterns -- word choices, syntax, where an American says 'on' and a Brit says 'in,' that kind of thing.

Oddly enough, most of what I've got here (that didn't come from Arctic Monkeys songs) came to my attention because I'd be reading a story in a fandom with an American canon, and I'd hit a phrase that made me go, "This author must be British." (The drawback of this is that some of it might be Australian or something.)

Anybody want to offer input? Here's what I've got (American on the left, British on the right).

Brits use a lot of 'got,' but I can't quite formulate a rule.

to see if you had my number -----> to see if you'd got my number

(also Americans say 'gotten')

Brits don't like to let helping verbs hang out alone.

"You'd eat a horse." "I have." ---> "You'd eat a horse." "I have done."

"That joke gets old." "It must." ---> "That joke gets old." "It must do."

The two dialects handle prepositions differently.

"in the hospital" ---> "in hospital"

"lives on Baker Street" ---> "lives in Baker Street"

Different vocabulary.

"we went to college together" ---> "we went to uni together"

"toss it" or "throw it away" ---> "bin it"

There are a number of things that Brits treat as plural that Americans treat as singular.

"the band wasn't very good" ---> "the band weren't very good"

"I'm no good at math" ---> "I'm rubbish at maths"

"the jury wasn't paying attention" ---> "the jury weren't paying attention"

Comments

[buddleia]

Worth noting that the language in shows I see crossing the Atlantic is usually markedly upper middle class. it comes across as a bit mannered in fic, at least to me.

[realpestilence]

I've always been bemused by "sport" as a singular activity. Brits engage in sport, Americans play sports.


Though there's nothing hard and fast any more. The popularity of various books, movies, tv shows, and their on-line fandoms encourage a great amount of crossover.

But you might want to look up "jumper", "house coat" and "bath robe" on amazon for photos thereof.

[cloudsinvenice]

It's really interesting to hear the singular/collective thing explained. In the last few years of writing on the internet I've realised that I'm quite bemused as to whether to use "they" or "it" to refer to a band - but I never realised the grammatical difference was a transatlantic one! That makes a lot of sense to me, though, because I've caught myself picking up all sorts of other American speech patterns, just from being online so much.

I keep thinking I ought to have new examples to offer the thread, but of course now I'm trying to think of some, none come to mind!

[aerye]

The one thing that stuck with me from writing Pros was that I was told Americans "figure" and Brits "reckon." As in, "I figured he was tired" and "I reckoned he was tired."

[resonant]

When I saw 'reckon' in Harry Potter, it seemed so strange to me, because Southern Americans say that all the time. It's one of the first things you expunge from your vocabulary when you move north so that people don't make fun of you.

[montanaharper]

I've actually got 2500+ words of the opposite of this in a GDocs at the moment: "American English and Culture for the Non-American." (Which I probably ought to make USian rather than American, but whatever. It's not done yet.)

Things I haven't seen above:

brilliant, which is frequently used when we'd say something like great or wonderful

Brits contract differently than Americans do. Where we'd say "I haven't," they'd say "I've not," for instance.

proper / properly - this gets used a lot where I'd use "really," etc.

(Which reminds me, if you care about the punctuation differences, UK English puts any punctuation that doesn't belong to the quoted material outside the quotes, where we'd put commas and periods inside. Also, where we'd use an em-dash with no spaces around it, they use an en-dash with a space on either side...unless it's at the end of a sentence, in which case there's no trailing space. All of which is probably far more nitpicky than you care about, but I'm a typesetter so I fixate on that stuff.)

There are shades of meaning to a Brit's "quite" that aren't there for us. I've been told it can often be indicative of damning something with faint praise.

toilet - used to mean what we'd call a bathroom or restroom when in a public space, and frequently used for bathroom in a private home as well.

That's what I've got for strictly linguistic stuff off the top of my head.

[wychwood]

I think you're right that the -ing form is the standard in the UK - that's definitely what feels "right" to me. I can't think of a logical reason for either pattern, though; it feels to me as though the US variant has a kind of silent "to be" in it, "he needs his head to be examined". Something to do with gerunds or participles or something? Who knows...

[wychwood]

I think that's more likely - we (UK) keep the "gotten" form in "forgotten" and the archaic "begotten", though you're right that "gotten" is purely American.

Also to chime in with others that I'm pretty sure I'd say I lived on Baker Street. I live on my current road, certainly.

The biggest thing I trip over as American is the formation "go do" - either in that form or as in "go phone her", "go read a book", "go watch a film" - we would always say "go and do".

Vocabulary - tons, of course, but I just thought of "stuff", which is very un-American; it replaces "things", more-or-less. "I have a lot of stuff with me today." "Just let me grab my stuff." "There's stuff all over the sofa."

Also, related but not the same thing quite: misuse of titles. I think this may be spreading over here, too, nowadays, but I always assume an American writer when I see the form Sir Surname. The normal form is Sir Firstname, and Sir Firstname Surname is valid, but Sir Surname is just flat-out wrong.

In general, I'd avoid using too much slang. A lot of people learn some English slang and then put it in everywhere; characters saying "bloody" and "bollocks" and "bleeding" all the time, when in fact you don't hear it all that much, and often it's specifically wrong for the character. We all say "maths", but I barely use "bleeding" and only generally in specific contexts ("the bleeding obvious"). Our slang is just as dependent on class, gender, age, race, etc as US slang!

[lobelia321]

'He was sat', 'he was stood' is Northern. People from Yorkshire / Cheshire tend to say this. However, lately I've noticed it creeping it into my (southern) students' essays also (watching too much Coronation Street? who knows)

[lobelia321]

Maths is. Sports is. Definitely. But: The pair of shoes are under the bed (people say this and it is, in British English, not grammatically uncorrect).

[lobelia321]

Isn't 'he has gotten' the present perfect? But 'he got' is simple past?

[lobelia321]

I have not heard 'well jel' or 'reem' or any Top Gear lingo so I suppose that makes me a) old and b) TV-resistant (and definitely Clarkson-resistant...!).

Re innit: I've started to notice this around a lot in fic written by non-Brits as if it were a normal English thing to say is. But it isn't. And non-AU Sherlock and Watson would never use this (unless ironically or in disguise). I wonder if it crept into the fandom via Delires' chav verse but come to think of it, that's actually Inception (argh! too many transatlantic fandoms iz confuzzling the brain...)

Ignore all I say.

[lobelia321]

Reckon is also Australian!

[lobelia321]

Also: English people don't 'fix' food or drink. In American fics I often read 'He fixed dinner' or '...a sandwich' or somesuch.

English: 'He made dinner' and 'He made a sandwich'.

But: 'He fixed the broken tap.'

[dafna]

I should say that I write "Peep Show" and Britcom RPF so slang is more common there than it would be in Sherlock.

[eleanorjane]

In the same vein as "go wash/go and wash", one that always stands out to me is "write". In British (and Australian) English you'd say "I wrote to her", not "I wrote her".

If you're looking for more, there's always the hp_britglish LJ comm; there are quite often grammar/vocab questions there, and the tags should provide a good selection of mineable info.

[nestra]

I'm watching a Russell Brand comedy special right now, and he's talking about being "sat" in front of the TV. "I was sat in front of the TV."

[aunty_marion]

We also say 'forgotten' rather than 'forgot' - 'I have [or 'I've'] forgotten what I was going to say', for instance. I've seen 'I forget what I was going to say' in some older (and, I think, mostly US) texts. But one might also say 'I forgot what I was going to say'. The only other sort of place where -gotten turns up is, possibly, 'misbegotten'.

The other odd (to my ears) past tense is one germane to my own interests - 'knit' instead of 'knitted'. Here, 'knit' is present tense, unless you're saying something like 'did you knit the first five stitches before the cable section?' But otherwise, it's a knitted garment, not a knit garment, and here is something I knitted last year (shameless self-plug!).

[aunty_marion]

Oh yes, and Americans 'guess' while the English 'suppose'. "I guess I'll have to figure that out" vs. "I suppose I'll have to work that out."

[aunty_marion]

But, with regard to 'made' in connection with food, one does not 'make eggs' for breakfast. The hen/chicken has made the eggs, what one is doing is cooking them, in various ways. And often referred to as 'done'. So one might say "I've done boiled [fried/poached/scrambled] eggs for breakfast" or "How would you like your eggs, scrambled or fried?" - with no 'done'/'cooked'/'made'. It always makes me wince and realise that the author is probably US/American when I read (e.g.) a Harry Potter story where Harry comes downstairs and Snape/Hermione/Charlie/whoever says "I've made eggs for breakfast!" - and for some reason that always seems to be scrambled. And when cooked, eggs are singular, so one lifts a forkful of egg to one's mouth, rather than a forkful of eggs, which always sounds as though they're still in their shells; a rather comical image!

[aunty_marion]

'He was sat/stood' always makes me twitch as being ungrammatical. One of the things I've been proofreading recently are car sales training workshop manuals (yes, really; you wouldn't *believe* what I could tell you about the Hyundai Five Point Walk-Around!), and one of them regularly says (for test drives) that 'the handover should take place with the customer sat inside the car' or 'perform [this sales technique] while stood behind the car', and I always, ALWAYS, correct it. *twitch*

[aunty_marion]

One oddity of American speech I've noticed in reading, with slight reference to your first item, is that Americans often seem to reply to a question such as 'Have you got my number?' with 'Yes, I do!' which sounds very odd to English ears. 'Yes, I have!' would be more likely over here; 'Yes, I do!' would be the reply to 'Do you have my number?'. (In other words, the verbs in question and answer would agree.)

[petra]

I have thankfully not found any misplaced "innit"s in my UK fandoms, which is just as well, as it would seem as wrong as Armstrong and Miller's RAF sketches written in modern slang and delivered in RP.

[aunty_marion]

Eh, reading comments reminds me of a couple of other things.

The English go shopping, not marketing; marketing means selling, here. And going 'to the market' would usually mean an outdoor (sometimes indoor) collection of small stalls, all selling different things; we'd usually just 'go shopping' or 'go to the shops' or to a specific shop - "I'm just off to Tesco [the butcher/greengrocer/ironmonger], do you need anything?" We don't go to 'the store[s]'; that's mostly only used in conjunction with another word/partial word, e.g. 'superstore' (huge supermarket), or 'department store' (such as Selfridges).

Another one is the propensity of some authors to leave 'Street', 'Road', etc off street names - far too often Harry Potter heads for Diagon. Nope, Diagon Alley, full name, please! Oxford? Oxford the town, Oxford Street, Oxford Circus? At the junction of Baker and Oxford... What? I live on (yes, it is 'on') Hargrave Park. Not Hargrave Road, which is up the main road a bit on the other side, and definitely not on Hargrave. Also, we don't generally have 'blocks'. From one street junction to another can cross a different number of roads on each side of the main road one is travelling along! For instance, to get from the bottom of my road to the junction of Holloway Road and Junction Road crosses my street and two others on this side; on the other side it crosses two. And not in the same places as the ones on this side, either.

[eyebrowofdoom]

Man. Just to add to the confusion, Australians say gotten (though got doesn't really stick out as wrong). We usually skew British. Where the hell did we get it from, I wonder?

It is very funny that fandom seems to know more about this than my professional editing class did last semester.