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David_Gerard comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5 - Less Wrong
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In fanfiction, the problem is solved (if the writer cares) collaboratively-- American writers trying to do British English well is such a common problem that the proof-reading and copy-editing has a name: Britpicking. I assume that most of that is done by native speakers.
The problems can be subtle. I was shocked to find that modern British English doesn't include "gotten". How do they make it through the day without such a useful word?
And I'm not going to mention the book because the author's a friend, but she writes excellent British English. When she had a couple of short passages of American dialogue, the result was agonizing. She didn't make the typical error of exaggerating differences, but there was something very wrong with the rhythm.
It bloody does include "gotten"! It's just regarded as an "Americanism", hence evil to the purity and beauty of the sacred English tongue [*].
British writers writing 'Merkin can be painful. I'm Australian and even I can tell.
[*] may not be 100% pure nor 100% sacred. Beauty may vary. Grammar may have settled in shipping.
I did two polls because of annoying constraints. The second one has comments, the first one may eventually get comments.
The results back up what you've said.
Thanks. At this point, since I did get this confirmed by someone British, I'm going to do a livejournal survey. There may be local variation.
In fiction, it would pretty much never be wrong to remove "gotten", but it does come out of their mouths.
That's an interesting question. British people-- some of them (and not all Americans, apparently) do use 'gotten', but seeing them use it in print will destroy some readers' suspension of disbelief. Truth or plausibility?
It seems to me that it would add versimilitude to have some British characters use more Americanisms than others, but that might be too subtle.