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Entry tags:
Linguistics
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"
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"
no subject
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...