Comments | fictualities: Brit-picking tool for writers and other word-lovers: the British National Corpus

fictualities

Brit-picking tool for writers and other word-lovers: the British National Corpus

Mar 26, 2008 16:10

Have you ever wondered how the British use a word like "pavement" or "jumper"? In fandom, non-British writers with such questions can get their fic Brit-picked, and that's a terrific idea. But Brit-picking has its limitations. What if you consult several British fans and they disagree? Who's right? Would a British person really use a word in ( Read more... )

Comments 27

darius March 26 2008, 19:56:55 UTC

And there's http://www.americancorpus.org/ for American English!

Out of curiosity I just signed up for a 30-day trial of http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/ which summarizes those lookups from the BNC and other corpora -- e.g. here's its summary of the BNC on hell. (The links would go to the word's instances of each sort, if you had an account.) It seems to be good only for relatively common words -- it refused to do 'hobbit'.

fictualities March 26 2008, 20:48:14 UTC

Oh, how NEAT! Thank you! I added your link to the American corpus to the main post. (Their user interface has a lot more pizazz, doesn't it?)

I love the list of modifiers for hell. Bloody and f--king and chuffing as you'd expect -- and then, TV. Shows you what people are thinking about! :D

darius March 26 2008, 21:33:55 UTC

Hell yeah. (Funny that that doesn't show up, or 'hell yes' -- I wonder if it's a shortcoming of their software.)

The best translation I can think of for brit-picking is nit-yanking -- but its meaning is much less obvious.

elanorgardner March 26 2008, 19:57:28 UTC

Thanks. *bookmarks* You are the greatest.

fictualities March 26 2008, 20:49:17 UTC

You're welcome! It's a great little toy to play with in an idle hour and a lifesaver for some fic-writing purposes.

gentlehobbit March 26 2008, 22:30:32 UTC

I had to laugh at your example. In my family, we had to be very careful with the use of "pavement" vs. "sidewalk". It would have been unfortunate to tell a child: "Get onto the pavement" only to see them dash onto the street in front of a car! "Sidewalk" had to be adopted quite quickly!

mollyringle March 26 2008, 23:47:43 UTC

Oh, how cool! *bookmarks*

Whatever horrors the internet spawns, it also brings us great things. Written corpus projects are a perfect example. Eventually we'll probably be able to search on all the text in the world at some supermega search engine. Okay, the thought is a little daunting, but mostly it's really cool.

SQUEE bohemima March 28 2008, 01:04:26 UTC

I love this whole business. Here's a question:
In "The Jewel in the Crown" (setting...1942 India) and in "Death in the Garden" (setting, about 1985 Britain) there is mention of roads that are not "metal" or "metalled", and thus are substandard and somewhat dicey. Now, presuming that the roads are not, in fact, beautiful wide strands of copper vanishing into the ether, does this "metal" refer to some sort of metallic webbing thingie used within the road stuff (oh, I am just so damned articulate tonight)? I asked my husband, an expert on roads, transportation, and building, U.S. style. He had never heard of metal roads, but was familiar with a sort of mesh, which he referred to as "pig wire", which is used within the roadbed stuff to give it stability. Can anyone clarify this for me?