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

[resonant]

"so" as a superlative without a subsequent "that," e.g. "he's so anxious"

That strikes me as a construction you'd mostly hear from girls and young women.

transcribing and analyzing YouTube interviews, I'm planning to pull together a post on language patterns of Russians speaking English as a second language

Which sounds like something Sherlock would do!

[jedusaur]

That strikes me as a construction you'd mostly hear from girls and young women.

In dialogue, maybe, but in narration I wouldn't expect to hear it much from anyone American.

Which sounds like something Sherlock would do!

It's kind of astonishing that I've only written one short Sherlock fic, given how strongly I identify with him. >.>

[queenbarwench]

I'd say 'so' as a superlative is actually fairly common (eg, The speaker was so boring.) It's possibly more of a Generation Y thing (of which I am technically not a member by 3 months), but I have heard my mother say it many times.