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

[lobelia321]

I have not heard 'well jel' or 'reem' or any Top Gear lingo so I suppose that makes me a) old and b) TV-resistant (and definitely Clarkson-resistant...!).

Re innit: I've started to notice this around a lot in fic written by non-Brits as if it were a normal English thing to say is. But it isn't. And non-AU Sherlock and Watson would never use this (unless ironically or in disguise). I wonder if it crept into the fandom via Delires' chav verse but come to think of it, that's actually Inception (argh! too many transatlantic fandoms iz confuzzling the brain...)

Ignore all I say.

[dafna]

I should say that I write "Peep Show" and Britcom RPF so slang is more common there than it would be in Sherlock.

[petra]

I have thankfully not found any misplaced "innit"s in my UK fandoms, which is just as well, as it would seem as wrong as Armstrong and Miller's RAF sketches written in modern slang and delivered in RP.