Tuesday, 31 October 2023

americanisms in british english

It seems that American English is everywhere - even in the UK:

Top Americanisms the British Find Annoying | Blog | Pangea Localization Services

38 Americanisms the British Can’t Bloody Stand ‹ Literary Hub

Americanisms in British English | Cambridge English

We can be positive:

Let's be smart, and reach out to Americanisms - The New European

Or not:

How Americanisms are killing the English language - BBC Culture

The New European's language columnist Peter Trudgill looks at how much US English is in UK English - but also vice versa:

A brief case for Americanisms

Many of us now use words imported from across the pond, like ’truck’ instead of ’lorry’. But the traffic isn’t only one-way...

As I was growing up in the 1950s, I was unaware that I was unwittingly using words that previous generations had considered to be Americanisms. What I called a battery had previously been known as an accumulator; my father had originally called his briefcase a portfolio. And I have written evidence in my teenage diaries that, without being aware of what I was doing, I stopped saying wireless and started saying radio some time after 1960.

Now I am very aware, as younger people presumably are not, that some words and phrases currently being employed by many British people were until recently employed only by Americans...

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