How to Write British Speaking Characters

I quibble about a few:

- "Cab" is more common, but Americans also use "taxi".
- I've never heard an American refer to a dwelling as a "flat".
- Americans have both gardens and yards, but they have different meanings. The place is the front yard, back yard, side yard, etc. That place may or may not then contain a garden. As in, "She has a vegetable garden in the back yard." If the place is mostly grass, with or without a thin fringe of shrubs, then it's probably just a "yard".
- Americans use purse and handbag and pocketbook. I'd say that purse is by far the most common.
- Garbage or trash. Garbage implies decaying food; trash implies crumpled paper.
- These days it's sneakers or running shoes. Sneakers feels a little old to me--like it belongs to my era.
- Trousers or pants. I would say that in American, trousers are a subset of pants, pants being any full-length two-legged garment, and trousers tending to be somewhat more formal ones. You may have tweed trousers, khaki pants, and the denim things are jeans.

 

Then bob's your uncle

*observing your location*

Seriously, "Heathrow". The resturants that provided a full english breakfast, fish and chips with the option to order a fine proper pint of ale made it the best airport I've ever changed flights at. First time I've ever been sad to leave an airport.

 

A Scottish comedian once said the reason we Scots die so young is from exhaustion trying to be understood!

But the idea of a British accent doesn't exist anywhere bar movies. The difference between a Cockney, Scouser, Brummie, Geordie, Belfast, Edinburgh or Glaswegian accent is so vast at times. That's before you get onto language. Scots is officially recognised as a language these days though it was previously just considered slang.

Also, someone above mentioned about Britain being the landmass, that's correct but there is more to it than that. The British Isles is composed of the land mass containing Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Great Britain actually refers to the larger area of these isles, not some sort of greatness, and is made up of Scotland, England and Wales. The other area was referred to as little Britain in ancient times and is made up of Northern Ireland and the Republic. But NEVER EVER refer to the Irish Isles as little Britain, you'd deserve what you got for that! The Republic of Ireland is a completely separate nation and state from the UK/Britain or whatever term.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, full name on the passport is explained by the above. It was previously the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until Irish Independence.

History lesson over but I never appreciated just how complex the set-up of the UK was until someone else asked me about it. Guess you just assume it's normal until you realise it isn't.

 

I suspect an American would have a similar difficulty when trying to compare and contrast the United States of America with the United States of Europe (formerly known as the European Union); I notice that California is agitating for Calexit...after all, they've had a similar experience of slowly acquiring neighbouring landmass (England conquering Scotland, the Eastern states driving native Americans out of more Western ones), the experience of acquiring overseas territories (England invading Ireland, the US acquiring Hawaii and Alaska), the experience of states seceding with associated violence (the counties that now form Eire/Republic of Ireland, the Southern states).

 

The older I get, the more complex I realise the world is.

 

Quite so - particularly because 'Britannia Minor' actually referred to Brittany, the region in northwestern France The Latin name for Ireland was Hibernia.

 

Wasn't it the Greeks who called it Britannia Minor?

Maybe I'm wrong, still, you'll offend someone so maybe I'm half right

 

Possibly, but Brittany wasn't a thing until the Saxons drove some of the (brythonic) celts onto the mainland, so they're probably rival etymologies.

 

I'm a bit late to the party, but hello, I'm British, if you have any more questions about the words we use. And good luck!

 

In our lifetime's we accept Irish independence as commonplace, but a man born 100 years ago would have an entirely different sense of Dublin & Cork, & Birmingham. Politics aside.

 

In what sense? The Easter Rising was 100 years ago last year.

 

To be fair I have colleagues who think in terms of the next village, have heard rumours of Brighton. But couched in any language, even 'your tentacles of Westminster [own quote],' he might/would have thought 'nation' encapsulated the whole of the British Isles.

And when I say 100 years, I mean actually 101 years ago when he is twenty years old, and a post-office cashier, on secondment, fast stream when suddenly buggers with rifles ruin everything...

[a lot of 'when']

 

Looking it up, this seems to be the case - the one usually used is the Latin (so, Britannia Major to refer to Great Britain, Britannia Minor to refer to Brittany, and Hibernia to refer to Ireland), but it seems Ptolemy referred to the islands as "megalis Brettanias" (Great Britain) and "Mikris Brettanias" briefly in the second century, before reverting to the more familiar Albion and Hibernia in later work (presumably when he found out the real names).

Seems we get the usual definitions from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae in the 12th century.

 

Did someone say anything about Irish freedom and stuff?

 

British person here. And as a British person, I would say that if you hear another British person speak you can instantly tell where they are from and how posh they are in a way I think is not quite the same in the USA. For example, if you have watched Game of Thrones as a British person, you can hear that none of the Stark children sound like they were raised together in the same part of the country - Robb and Jon do a pretty good job at Sean Bean's Sheffield accent (when, in real life, Robb is Scottish and Jon is very Home Counties), Sansa and Bran sound very southern RP, Arya sounds like she's somewhere from the Midlands/West Country and Rickon (when he speaks) sounds Irish. Coupled with this there is also the gradient of poshness - for example, if you just listened to Harry, Ron and Hermione speak devoid of context, in order of poshness (most to least) you would instantly place them Hermione > Harry > Ron. In terms of accents, you obviously have the traditional RP English typified by the Queen, but there is also now this kind of posh "Mockney" which is all the posh people purposefully dropping their t's to sound less posh - maybe someone like Keira Knightley typifies this. "Posh" also doesn't mean exclusively southern - while RP is most associated with poshness, there can also be "posh" types of other accents, for example compare the posher Edinburgh accent (think Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter) versus the stronger Glasgow accent (listen to the comedians Kevin Bridges or Billy Connolly for examples of that).

Of course, accent is hard to replicate on paper, but each of these accents also have words associated with them that will clearly distinguish them from other groups. That's why, if you are going to research regional slang, do it well - you wouldn't catch someone from Somerset saying "Why aye man" (which would instantly mark someone out as a Geordie). I would perhaps suggest you go with making your British character from the Home Counties if you are unfamiliar with all the nuances - it is the type most readily accessible in the media (Harry, Hermione, Sherlock, all of the Lannisters, Daenerys and the 10th doctor also have the typical RP/Home Counties accent and basically any relatively famous British actor bar Sean Bean, James McAvoy and David Tennant) and doesn't really have any really unusual localisms to contend with. There are of course words that a British person wouldn't use that an American perhaps would but I have always found that often it is the insults or swear words that are most drastically different (for example, I have never heard a British person say the word jerk). One I read recently that was both wrong and unintentionally funny was a supposedly British character who got into an argument with another character on a bus and threatened to "toss him off" (ie. the bus). That really doesn't mean the same thing in the UK.

So, my advice basically would be: 1) Make your character from London/Home Counties because you don't have to deal with really difficult regional slang, and it is just the case of using more likely words (an example from earlier up the thread was the football game was a draw, not a tie 2) Listen to British people on TV/the media to get an idea of how they speak 3) Check your insults/swear words because these are the areas where it most radically departs.

 

Incidentally, my dad is from Belfast, and I'm hard done differentiating between a Glaswegian and someone from Belfast. To prevent falling foul of moving them up I always refer to the accent as Gaelic.

 

Strange, my daughters use it all the time!

I second your point about the DNA of the GoT accents.

You've clearly been dahn Sarff too long! There's a massive difference between those two cities; and between those two cities and the rural areas nearby, e.g. Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh. And you are rather omitting any Welsh city - or town - from your categorization as Gaelic!

 

A little (lot) off-topic aside. My wife is French-Canadian from St. Pie, a little town in south-eastern Quebec. She left Quebec during the rise of the Separatist movement and moved to British Columbia on the west coast where she perfected her English. The reason she left Quebec was because her accent defined where and at what social level she was from. She can tell where French-Canadians are from just as @La_Donna can identify Brits (is that okay?).

I used to have to attend conferences at the university where I worked in Montreal. Most of the presenters were French-Canadian, and except for some of the professorial types, spoke with incomprehensible accents. I asked a French-Canadian professor the next day after such a conference why wouldn't the presenters use some kind of normal French. My question was obviously stupid to her. Because that would be putting on airs.

Then there was the translator, Mimi, who felt ostracized because she spoke International French (although I thought it was because she never stopped talking).

 

We were on holiday in France a few years ago, and got asked if we were Canadian. At the time, we took it as a compliment on our accents; perhaps we were wrong!

 

Where I come from, literally everyone speaks like this: - "Would you adam and eve it, my china plate did bird lime after he half inched some bread and honey. Anyway, he's down the rub-a-dub then we're off for a ruby murray, and I'm hank marvin. Laters Guv'nor." Or maybe its just Danny Dyer.

 

You could make your character Scandinavian? They speak better English than English people - in a plain-speaking kind of way. Simply write it 'American,' insert UK idiom via the device of 'and how do you people say like two pea in pods,' said Erik, and every 200 words 'for sure.' Continentals always say 'for sure,' for sure.

 

Us Scots get a bad wrap for our destruction of the English language but some of the regional English ones are atrocious.

Also, the Essex accent ranks with nails along a chalk board for me.

 

In reality no-one uses cockney rhyming slang outside of a Guy Ritchie movie, and if they did it would be a sure sign they're a bit of a tit.

 

Cockneys