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

[jedusaur]

The comments on this are fascinating. I recently betaed and Yankpicked a 110k fic for a couple of authors from New Zealand, and the process involved a lot of "wait, you don't say that? REALLY?" moments from them. There were a lot of instances of the word "ages" (as in a thing taking ages to happen), which I suggested they replace with "forever," but they weren't quite satisfied with that as an equivalent. They used "though" in contexts most Americans wouldn't, and "round" instead of "around." And I found a lot of phrasings that weren't strictly un-American, but that I would expect to hear more from older adults (this was a hockey RPF fic, so the POV character and most other main characters were young men), or that I do hear, but much less often than the NZ folks used them. For example, they would use the word "so" as a superlative without a subsequent "that," e.g. "he's so anxious"--which we do once in a while, but I don't see it here as often as it cropped up in the fic. I should have kept a list as I went, because I know we discovered a lot of interesting differences in language habits that I've now forgotten.

When I have some free time to spend transcribing and analyzing YouTube interviews, I'm planning to pull together a post on language patterns of Russians speaking English as a second language, because hockey RPF fandom has a lot of Russian characters and a lot of authors who can't write their dialogue believably. (This includes myself; my main reason for doing this is so I can include Russian characters in my own fic without freaking out too much about getting their speech patterns wrong.) I think that one Sherlock fic is the only time I've really made an effort to Britishize (Britishise?) my writing--I didn't have as many Britpicking resources or as much commitment to quality in fic when I wrote in other non-American fandoms.

[resonant]

"so" as a superlative without a subsequent "that," e.g. "he's so anxious"

That strikes me as a construction you'd mostly hear from girls and young women.

transcribing and analyzing YouTube interviews, I'm planning to pull together a post on language patterns of Russians speaking English as a second language

Which sounds like something Sherlock would do!

[jedusaur]

That strikes me as a construction you'd mostly hear from girls and young women.

In dialogue, maybe, but in narration I wouldn't expect to hear it much from anyone American.

Which sounds like something Sherlock would do!

It's kind of astonishing that I've only written one short Sherlock fic, given how strongly I identify with him. >.>

[queenbarwench]

I'd say 'so' as a superlative is actually fairly common (eg, The speaker was so boring.) It's possibly more of a Generation Y thing (of which I am technically not a member by 3 months), but I have heard my mother say it many times.