British English editing for Yanks

[Ursa major]

But what rocks...?

 

[Phyrebrat]

Those would be "patriots", thank you very much!

<fingers in ears> lalalalalalalalala can't hear you lalalalalalala <puts on lovely red blazer & hides in the bushes on Paul Revere's route with one of those stabby guns>

Oh, they throw much worse than tea round here...

Oh, here it's shopping trolleys

pH

 

[TheDustyZebra]

<fingers in ears> lalalalalalalalala can't hear you lalalalalalala <puts on lovely red blazer & hides in the bushes on Paul Revere's route with one of those stabby guns>

The guys in red are contractually obligated to walk down the center of the road. No bushes for you!

 

[Toby Frost]

In politics, "liberal" and "socialist" have somewhat different meanings in the UK than the US, too.

 

[chrispenycate]

Oh, here it's shopping trolleys

I can (sort of) understand putting one's shopping into the trolley at the checkout and wheeling it into the parking lot (car park), before realizing (realising) one has no vehicle into the trunk (boot) of which to install the load. But why, now equipped with a quite sophisticated and doubtless expensive metallic object seek out canal, harbor (harbour), river, lake, fishpond or, at a pinch, municipal swimming pool to chuck it and various bicycles, perambulators or mopeds into? (not, so far, mobility scooters and zimmer frames. The ancient are more polite). Are the fish supermarkets short of transport? Is this the modern alternative to the lobster pot? Or is it merely Brownian movement, with the loose trolleys jostling around until they reach a lowest energy point capture zone, which is, due to the tendency of water to flow downhill, generally inundated?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I used to have a neighbour who had a shopping trolley on permanent loan for trips to local shops/buying coal etc. Each time it got rusty he popped down and traded it in. It's going into a book one day....

 

[Ursa major]

It's going into a book one day....

On first glance, I thought you said brook.

 

[J-Sun]

On the "sat"/"was sat"/"was seated" thing, if I hear "I walked into the empty room and sat at the table," I get "someone sitting at a table". "Was seated" is what happens to a person going to a certain range of restaurants. "Was sat" would be comprehensible to me as the same thing but I think is non-standard.

I started to say "fancy" restaurants, but they actually just can't be fast food joints and such. But that raised the idea that we (Americans) say "fancy" in the sense of "posh" but never say "posh" nor say "fancy" in the sense of "like" or desire". But I think you can say fancy in either sense in English?

Those are just a couple of the ways American is different from English. (Which is another: things are similar to and different from, never different to - can you say "different from" in English or is that an "American" giveaway?)

And in the first season of Heroes Horn-Rimmed Glasses shouted up to his daughter: "Claire! Get your tight little fanny down here!"

Please don't have someone shout that to his daughter if you're trying to use British English...

Um, I don't think you'd say that in any English but I gather you're objecting to the "fanny". It's more the overly appraising "tight" that would make me raise an eyebrow.

Things like "flash light", "elevator" "trash can" and "side walk" scream American ("torch", "lift", "bin" and "pavement")

Point of order - I think it ought to be "flashlight" and "sidewalk". (We're sometimes German. But I think we do use a hyphen a lot more than British does. Or maybe I do.)

Having a character say "bollocks" as a crude alternative for "rubbish" or "damn!" would help, used sparingly.

As well as 'bollocks', 'bloody hell' is also a good term to use.

used the word 'bloody' three or four times per episode. It was so distracting.

That's what I'd have thought. I always assumed it would strike a British-speaking person as a lazy stereotype like "y'all" is supposed to make someone an instant (US) Southerner.

An American told me that an Aussie had once asked him if he could "bum a fag", which caused a raised eyebrow.

(cadge a cigarette)

Also, you missed out brunch.

I know this is supposed to be "giveaway Americanisms to British" and not vice versa, but we wouldn't say "cadge" either, as far as I know. I think most every American would know what it meant but it's just not something we actually say. We might use the "bum" part in "bum a smoke" but it'd probably just be a pitched-into-a-question "got a cigarette". And we don't miss out things, but leave them out or miss them. Again, not sure about the reciprocals.

Unfortunately, despite having spent considerable time in the Untied States of America I never learnt to sling thr lingo, but I do not consider those south of the Mason/Dixon line as 'Yanks', reserving this etiquette for their northern cousins.

This is quite true. Yanks are only those who were (or would have been) on the side of the North in the Civil War.

Actually, people north of the line are Yankees. It's easier to put the sneer in when you have the two syllables after "damn".

-- Oh yeah: I'm guessing "etiquette" was a thinko for "sobriquet"?

putting one's shopping into the trolley

I'm guessing you're putting the groceries in the cart there? A trolley is what they have in San Francisco and we usually have groceries or just other "stuff" though we wouldn't not use "shopping" in mostly non-grocery cases.

Sorry for the length and the intermittent on/off-topicality - I just think language and linguistic drift is neat.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Actually, people north of the line are Yankees. It's easier to put the sneer in when you have the two syllables after "damn".

Sorry for the length and the intermittent on/off-topicality - I just think language and linguistic drift is neat.

Yes, that's true -- but if "Yanks" means Americans of any sort, it would just about have to be those who would qualify as Yankees.

I agree with all of your other points, as well.

 

[J Riff]

There are dreadful books out there, just chock full of 'british slang' ... 'knickers in a twist' ... half-full of rubbishy stuff, sounds like someone made it up, or else things like 'flat' for an apt. ... which was in the windows all over NYC in the fifties, but now is a 'british' word, in the British language. I heartily disrecommend any of these 'diptionaries' which have appeared, and am going back to Fowler's and other proper books about English, I trow. *

 

[Ursa major]

-- Oh yeah: I'm guessing "etiquette" was a thinko for "sobriquet"?

Sorry, no.

A sobriquet is a familiar name for someone; etiquette refers to accepted forms of behaviour.

'The King' is a sobriquet for Elvis Presley; someone will be watching whether you conform to the correct etiquette should you happen to meet a king in a formal situation.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

On the other hand, Mark Twain and L. Frank Baum are fine as they are.

I've always suspected it's some people in US don't cope so well with cheque, queue, rubber (eraser for USA), Faggot (stick or a strange English Mince meat product), Silencer (Muffler on car, not the thing on 007's gun), Boot Sales (Trunk?), Bonnet (hood of car) fortnight etc.
I never heard of American books being edited to British English, but the reverse seems common.

I think it would be extraordinary achievement for an American to write a convincing British character as it's not a question of spelling, vocabulary and syntax /grammar. There is a whole culture to get right. I doubt I could do it for any kind of detailed English Main Character. I've spoken almost British English all my life. Subsidiary English Characters perhaps. I'd not attempt Cornish or Welsh characters at all. Some sorts of Scottish and oddly Manx I could manage. All types of N.I. Dublin, Donegal, Louth and Mid West Ireland, but not Cork / Galway/Kerry/Mayo/Killkenny/Waterford.

knickers in a twist: Can't remember anyone in real life saying it.

Phrases go obsolete or are very local. Someone a bit daft or proposing something foolish
"Yer hied is fulla sweetie mice"

Maybe the @springs knows that one

Local dialect and ANY slang can date quickly or be incomprehensible.
you don't want people to think "you're away with the fairies" (this may mean something totally different to people elsewhere than were I grew up)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@Ray McCarthy Wee sweetie mice? Yer head's a balloon, mate.

 

[J-Sun]

Sorry, no.

A sobriquet is a familiar name for someone; etiquette refers to accepted forms of behaviour.

'The King' is a sobriquet for Elvis Presley; someone will be watching whether you conform to the correct etiquette should you happen to meet a king in a formal situation.

I know, and that's what "Yank" is - a familiar name for an American from a non-American. On the other hand, you don't tend to "reserve" etiquette so I thought he might be reserving the familiar name for Northerners. They're pronounced differently but still French things with 'quet's in them, so that was the substitute that occurred to me.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I say "knickers in a knot" all the time. Just yesterday, in fact.

 

[Mouse]

I have two American publishers now, so I'm getting a fair bit of 'can you explain this please?' and 'doesn't translate.' I've also had all my towards/forwards/backwards changed to toward/forward/backward (which was painful) and, apparently, you seem to use more commas in the US.

I've had 'a member of staff' changed to 'a member of the staff.'

And learnt that 'rotary line' is deeply confusing for you Americans, and apparently you use 'upside-down umbrella outside washing line' or some such mouthful!

You also don't know what UHT milk is.

I'm currently fighting to keep all my jumpers as jumpers and not turn them into sweaters.

As an aside, in my experience, every book I've picked up which has been supposedly set in the UK, or had UK characters, has been obvious to me within a few lines that the author isn't a Brit and, more often than not when I've checked, they've come from the States. What gives it away? The swearing. You guys have no idea how to use swear words as a Brit would!

We do not have the word "gotten".

Not true. We use 'gotten' where I come from.

He was born in Somerset (which may or may not have contributed to the "problem" ).

Oi!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

And Almost no US book is edited into British English, I'd be upset and import a copy if they were. This is stupidity and arrogance by Publishers. I can't believe that the US book buying public requires British English to be transmogrified into US English. Especially if Fiction in British setting or Fantasy. Perhaps technical & reference books should be.

 

[ratsy]

Mouse, I didn't understand a word of that...

 

[Hex]

Sorry, Mouse. I hadn't ever heard the word "gotten" used in British English. I thought it was an American only thing.

(The internet says that the British stopped using "gotten" about 300 years ago, but clearly that's not true everywhere).

 

[The Judge]

I've heard "gotten" over here, but only as a result of... um... *hastily rethinks using the word "contamination" * ... influence from American TV and films. It might well have lingered in dialect, though.