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

[sakana17]

Another one I first came across in fanfiction written by Brits (or Commonwealthers) but now find in newspapers, etc.:

"he was sitting" --> "he was sat"
"she was standing" --> "she was stood"

[reginagiraffe]

Is that British!? I've been seeing that a LOT lately (mostly in Teen Wolf fic - a more American show I can't imagine) and it's been driving me crazy.

[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)

[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*

[resonant]

I could swear I've read Brits complaining about that, too. Nobody wants to claim it!

[sakana17]

When I first noticed it several years ago, a friend was visiting England and said it was prevalent there, spoken and written. The person she was staying with thought it was a regionalism that had crept into wider use. Since then I've read it not only in fanfiction but on the BBC website, in UK academic journals, and in American newspapers (which made my blood run cold, worrying that it was encroaching into U.S. English!).

[louiselux]

Ooh yes. Just chipping in to say that I'm British and I can't stand it. It sounds so ungrammatical to me!