When I worked for a multi-national silicon valley based company we got so sick of the creeping Americanisms (to be fair their jargon was worse, they even had a company glossary for it) that we started a game.<p>We had a tally chart on the wall for anyone who slipped into saying one of them accidentally. I survived for weeks until I rang someone to 'touch base'!<p>They seemed to have a group policy (or something) that changed the the dictionary in Office back to 'American English' each reboot. I just ignored the coloured (!) underlines and typed the way I wanted as my own personal battle.<p>I don't actual have a problem with the variant spellings of American English. I have a problem with certain kinds of bad English that happen to seem more prevalent amongst Americans!<p>1) Verbalisation: "I am hoping to medal in the next Olympics". This sounds to me like they are planning to <i>meddle</i> with it. What is wrong with, "I am hoping to win a medal"?<p>2) Bi-monthly and bi-weekly. Twice a week or every two weeks? Twice a month or every two months. When you want to hold a meeting every two weeks then perhaps a fortnightly meeting would tell people when they need to be there?<p>3) Reaching out. To mean making contact. What is wrong with, I wrote to x, I called Y etc.<p>4) Bootstrapping a business: I get down-voted for this, but this seems to cover everything from, "I'm so rich I didn't need to take outside investment", to "I did this as an add on to my existing business and supported it with our existing funding" to "We started on a server I found in a skip and scaled it up from there until I could quit my job". In most of the cases I have seen it could be replaced with the phrase, "I started a business" without losing any meaning whatsoever.<p>I should stop annoying you all and do some work
I think I just hurt my eyes from rolling them so far back in my head. Cultures in contact with each other share words. It goes both ways. A quarter or more of the words in English are outright copied from French... oh, but that happened a long time ago.<p>As an American, I've noticed certain words I associate with British English creeping into our vocabulary as well. In my mind I associate it with Harry Potter and Doctor Who, but I realize Anglophilia is no new thing--these are just the bits of British pop culture that hit me in my early adulthood.<p>The fact is that British and American English will each remain distinctive, even as they continue to share and evolve together as well. The Internet is definitely making this evolution happen more quickly. But it still goes both ways, and will continue to do so. Some of the changes you'll like and adopt without thinking about, some you will find annoying or crude, some you will hate with a completely irrational passion. It's part of life. Enjoy it!
As a foreign speaker, American English has become the reference. Almost all English sources I use are American. (e.g. movies, tv series, youtube channels...). I try not to use words specific to British English and I set my spellchecker to U.S. English.<p>It sounds wrong to refer to British English as <i>the</i> English language. There are several English languages that coexist and cross-pollinate.
From the perspective of a non-native speaker of the language, it seems to me that the United States <i>is</i> English's killer product. A great deal of the credit for the English language's dominance must go to the US and the culture and technology it exports relentlessly all over the world. Far from killing the English language as the author complains, the US might just have made it prevail over similar contenders like Spanish or Mandarin.
An interesting phenomenon I've noticed is that a lot of people, and often intelligent people, believe that language that have been evolving for thousands of years should, somehow, just stop evolving today.<p>Interestingly, while one would expect it to be correlated with political belief (conservatives would want language as it was in good old days, progressives would embrace the change) my personal anecdotal evidence says it isn't.
This has been happening to the English language for the entirety of its existence. The process may have accelerated, but it's the same process that's led to the mishmash of Germanic, Latin and panoply of loanwords that we use every day.
I was about to point out how much American TV is broadcast daily in the UK and how that shapes language and culture over here. But I think the complete lack of British online social communities is going to be even more influential. Everyone over here is on facebook, youtube, reddit, etc. Everyone is installing games and apps on their phones with American English phrasing. Aside from reading the bbc, telegraph etc or shopping/banking online, every other bit of online content consumed over here is mostly American centered.
'marvellous' saw something of an ironic renaissance in Australia as a homage to Richie Benaud.<p>The Spanish cognate 'maravilloso' survives.
Just another special case of erosion of all kinds of diversity as we become globally connected. Biological, linguistic, cultural etc.<p>If you want to do something about it, and you aren't an American, then preserve what's unique to your place and people. Don't get swept up mindlessly in the global consumerist culture. Merely lamenting is not going to save vanishing diversity.
> Engel says. “A nation that outsources the development of its own language – that language it developed over hundreds of years – is a nation that has lost the will to live”.<p>I believe something similar applies now to Australian English. Many of the words and phrases, developed over 200 years of unique shared experience, and also incorporated from a diverse range of linguistic immigration, are no longer commonly in use. Or at least not commonly in use amongst the younger urban population, which seems to drive much of the national cultural norms today.<p>I think the language is poorer for this loss, but also understand it is perhaps an inevitable consequence of constant exposure to the dominant Western global cultural force.
How can you "kill" something that constantly evolves?<p>A hundred years ago modern-day "britishisms" would be viewed as "killing the English language".<p>Also, what's "British English"? These two are British English:<p>- received pronunciation with it's "proper English": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q</a><p>- Glasgoans (??) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c</a> with "bubblin' and greetin'" and other weird stuff
No doubt we "Americans" have changed the language, for better or worse, but this comment is more about journalism.<p>I expect more from the BBC than to let a former Bloomberg journalist make generalizations without anything to back it up. "Awesome" occurring more often than "marvelous" doesn't provide us with anything other than the fact that the author appreciates the latter more than the former.<p>Seems appropriate that I should go write a piece for the BBC on how journalism has declined and how Brits are contributing, and be sure to cite this article.
British English is no longer appropriate because it was never properly promulgated in its colonies. Around the world from South Africa to Belize and even in Canada varietal bastardizations of the language have been allowed to emerge creating more English that is not British. Both Spanish and English are languages that have become decentralized and there will never be a global standard in favor of the country where the barefoot barbarians claim to dominate it so completely.
I am not sure what is the author trying to convey with the article. I mean... isn't it a feature of languages that they evolve and change with society? I think pretty much every language today is not exactly the same that it was a couple of generations ago so why would we expect it to be what it is now in the future? Or is the complaint just that are the Americas bringing the most changes?
Though there are lots of conspicuous imports in e.g. product names, those are just on the surface. It's harder for "supposed to be" to replace "meant to be" than for "ATM" to replace "cash point."
It's sad to see such bullshit conservatism from someone who has written for bbc and the guardian. This is the kind of arguments that Brexit backers use. "Let's protect the English language! Let's kick all the foreigners out!"