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

[isilya]

"Quite" as a modifier means very different things:

UK/Commonwealth: quite pretty is less pretty than pretty.
US: quite pretty means very pretty.

Nonplussed:

UK: surprised and confused, taken aback, unsure how to react.
US: unperturbed.

I'm trying to avoid using both quite and nonplussed in my writing as they seem destined to poorly convey my meaning.

[resonant]

Really? 'quite' modifies something to be less so? That's interesting.

And if people in the US are using 'nonplussed' to mean 'unperturbed,' they're using it wrong, because that's not what it means. I think that may be one of those things like 'droll,' which a percentage of the population persists in equating to 'dull' (or 'comprise' to 'compose') -- an error so persistent that it effectively erases the word.

[isilya]

"Quite" can be subbed for "somewhat". Quite tired, somewhat tired. Quite pretty, somewhat pretty.

I had no idea re: nonplussed until I started seeing it on twitter and in fic. But even the OED acknowledges that it is used in US English to mean unperturbed.

I think there's a difference with how we use call/phone/ring as well.

I am perfectly happy to phone, call, or ring someone, but apparently phoning someone is weird to the US ear.

[aunty_marion]

'Quite' is a deprecatory modifier (if that's a phrase!) in BritEnglish, so does indeed usually mean 'somewhat less'. 'Rather' is sort of the opposite - 'that's rather nice' = 'that's very good'. Rather expensive = if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it. Quite expensive = I wouldn't pay that much for it usually, but if it's a treat... But there can be a lot of gradation in how both are used.

A few months ago, there was a 'thing' floating round on Facebook which was a chart of phrases and what an American and an Englishman would understand them to mean. Some of them had quite (here in the sense of 'absolutely) different meanings!

[resonant]

Back when I was on Table Talk, there was a beautiful quote from a British guy: "What you call a fanny, we call a bum. What you call a bum, we call a tramp. What you call a tramp, we call a trollop. Bringing us back around, with beautiful symmetry, to what we call a fanny."

[china_shop]

Really? 'quite' modifies something to be less so? That's interesting.

If someone comments on a fic saying, "I quite enjoyed this," I hear a silent "but..." hovering after it, and have to remind myself it's probably not intended. *g*

[cyphomandra]

(here vaguely via china_shop)

A British fanfic writer writing in an American fandom posted this absolutely livid lj entry about some appalling person who had the effrontery to comment - twice - on one of their stories that she was writing "quite well". I'm not sure they ever sorted it out.

Breakfasts are a great point of divergence - "fixing breakfast" as US, differences over eggs as above, orange juice (possibly just me, but I've always considered this at breakfast to be very US), and of course failure to appreciate the true joys of an electric kettle. I am still recovering from the trauma of having an otherwise wonderful US friend shove a teabag into a mug of cold water and stick it in the microwave for me...