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

[twistedchick]

I can't find the link at the moment (sorry!) but there was something recently about performing Shakespeare in the way Shakespeare spoke the language -- and how the different pronunciation really showed up some of the jokes that make no sense these days. FWIW, I thought the Shakespearean period pronunciation sounded liked what I've heard in some parts of the Appalachians, which would also make sense, since that's where a lot of poorer folks (Highlanders leaving after Culloden, etc.) And the language stays around a lot longer, until now.

Where my mother grew up, in a small town outside Ottawa, the basic accent is so strongly Irish that it sounds like the entire crew just emigrated, when most have been there five generations or more.

[resonant]

I watched that video -- maybe I followed a link from your journal. And I sent a link to the spouse, who said, "They all sound like pirates!"

Pirate linguistics would probably be a fascinating field of study except that there probably aren't a lot of written sources.

When I lived in the NC mountains, people told me that dialects could vary noticeably from one 'cove' (valley) to another, but I never heard any difference. Most of the people I talked to were from someplace else anyway.

Also, I used to work with a bunch of guys from the north of England, and one of them had a noticeably different accent, which he said was because his mother was from Scotland.

[twistedchick]

Hmm. The -en might have something to do with which verbs came from Anglo-Saxon as opposed to Norman French?

[majoline]

Pirates are always Cornish (also what most people think Shakespeare sounds like) thanks to the Pirates of Penzance.