Some Americanisms have ‘snuck’ in…

Matthew Engel, writing this week in the Daily Mail, raises once again the age old complaint that Americanisms can sometimes seep into usage in Britain. Although he readily admits that languages evolve he seems to want them to evolve on his terms only, i.e. by not allowing these ‘intrusions’.

However, this is precisely how language evolves. The English language has many roots from numerous different sources, far too long to begin describing (but for those interested see here) and now is not any different. This effect is greater now that we live in a more globalized(!) world, especially with substantial internet usage. When reading an article online that article may originate from anywhere in the world, is it therefore any surprise that a few Americanisms are going to creep in?

Add to this the influence of movies and television, with the former being a mainly American industry and the latter seen increasingly on British television, then by a natural process some words will be adopted, perhaps not intentionally but by a process of osmosis. The process seems to be inevitable. In fact, as I type, Microsoft Word seems to enjoy hopping back and forth between English (United Kingdom) and English (United States), perhaps because they are both widely used and readily available on the interface. Normally this is annoying, but for the purposes of this blog entry I have let it do its thing, hence the mixture of British and American spelling variations throughout.

There will always be people who cannot stand this type of language intrusion; normally these are the type of people who will write in to a newspaper or television program when simple grammatical mistakes occur (think difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’) and these people simply would never entertain the notion of uttering a single one of these ‘alien’ words.

Having said this, however, I myself must freely admit to being slightly irritated by one or two of these intrusions. My main annoyance features on Engel’s list and is the phrase ‘you do the math’, it’s ‘maths’ surely? Grrr. But given the scale with which new words emerge and filter through to other nations, I think one or two are negligible.

So, like it or not, these changes are here to stay and in a sometimes divisive world I say they are a positive thing. Language after all, in its many forms, can bring people together and the more words we have at our disposal in our vernacular the better.