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

[wychwood]

I think that's more likely - we (UK) keep the "gotten" form in "forgotten" and the archaic "begotten", though you're right that "gotten" is purely American.

Also to chime in with others that I'm pretty sure I'd say I lived on Baker Street. I live on my current road, certainly.

The biggest thing I trip over as American is the formation "go do" - either in that form or as in "go phone her", "go read a book", "go watch a film" - we would always say "go and do".

Vocabulary - tons, of course, but I just thought of "stuff", which is very un-American; it replaces "things", more-or-less. "I have a lot of stuff with me today." "Just let me grab my stuff." "There's stuff all over the sofa."

Also, related but not the same thing quite: misuse of titles. I think this may be spreading over here, too, nowadays, but I always assume an American writer when I see the form Sir Surname. The normal form is Sir Firstname, and Sir Firstname Surname is valid, but Sir Surname is just flat-out wrong.

In general, I'd avoid using too much slang. A lot of people learn some English slang and then put it in everywhere; characters saying "bloody" and "bollocks" and "bleeding" all the time, when in fact you don't hear it all that much, and often it's specifically wrong for the character. We all say "maths", but I barely use "bleeding" and only generally in specific contexts ("the bleeding obvious"). Our slang is just as dependent on class, gender, age, race, etc as US slang!

[eyebrowofdoom]

Man. Just to add to the confusion, Australians say gotten (though got doesn't really stick out as wrong). We usually skew British. Where the hell did we get it from, I wonder?

It is very funny that fandom seems to know more about this than my professional editing class did last semester.

[jesse_the_k]

For values of "funny" = "of course".

Best thread ever and we get more resonant Sherlock.

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlQDMhAWqLMROnTE-sdfU_i-sYScmFpi24]

No, we don't!!!! Or, at least some people do (most common in Sydney, ime), but it's new (and probably due to recent stronger American influence) and still not widespread.

[resonant]

Americans say 'stuff' too -- very very common here. (When the kidlet was small, she went through this hilarious phase where she thought 'stuff' was plural, so she'd say things like "It's under these stuff" or "There are stuff under the bed.")

About titles: In my writers' group there's a woman who wants to write Regency romance, but she obviously doesn't read Regency romance, and she drives me nuts with the titles -- I mean, I don't know reliably how to do it right, but it's very obvious to me when it's being done wrong. I also had to tell her that she couldn't name a Regency heroine Stacy!

When I worked with those guys from Preston, they told me it made them flinch when Americans would try to use British slang, because we have no feel for what's offensive and what isn't -- I mean, you can't reason that out, with slang; you just have to know.

It was my job to translate for them to the building office, so they'd come in and say, "The bulb in the gents' is knackered" and I'd call the building office and say, "The light in the men's room is burned out."

[jesse_the_k]

OK, that translated example has to feature in some Sherlock deduction opportunity!

[dafna]

I wrote brief guide to British titles, if it helps.

[wychwood]

Even a lot of Regency romance gets it wrong, in my limited experience of it, actually - Heyer is reliably right, but I've read a bunch of published novellas, etc (mostly in those four-author anthologies with JD Robb stories in) which were terrible on many, many aspects of Regency mores, etc.

Stacy is a perfectly reasonable Regency name... for a man!

they told me it made them flinch when Americans would try to use British slang, because we have no feel for what's offensive and what isn't -- I mean, you can't reason that out, with slang; you just have to know.

Yes, exactly. You need to know the subtle gradations of what is and isn't appropriate in specific contexts! And, for fic-writing purposes, it's often not the sort of thing it's easy to codify; a lot easier to Brit-pick afterwards, and say, well, I just can't see Sherlock ever saying "bollocks".

I'm an expert North-American-to-British translator at this point, between various close friends at university and fandom since!

(incidentally, if you're looking for a Brit-picker beta I'm happy to oblige, though I don't know this version of Sherlock at all well)