Do you as a native speaker of British English feel that Americanisms are in the process of replacing their British equivalents in British English?

4 Comments

  • Wynf Jones - 8 years ago

    I cringe whenever I hear British people say "gotten" or mention"cupcakes". This has always happened to some extent but in the past the traffic was more two-way. The internet's sped the process up ridiculously. We need to assert ownership of OUR language! The French protect their language, we should have the same pride. Step one would be for Brits everywhere to stop putting up with US spellings! Complain when Microsoft etc. foist them on us. MS products for example have settngs for different versions of Portuguese, Spanish & Chinese, but US English is the only option in many pieces of software.

  • Philip Wade - 9 years ago

    In addition to individual words and phrases such as movie for film, smart for clever, fix for mend, be fired for be sacked, throw up for be sick, constructions like, "She just went out" for "she's

    In addition to words & phrases such as movie for film, smart for clever, fix for mend, be fired for be sacked, etc, constructions such as "She just went out" for "She's just gone out", & "I don't have for "I haven't (got)" have become commonplace in British English in recent years. It seems to be a one-way process.

  • tracy - 9 years ago

    Doing the dishes,doing the laundry,heads up!No just No!

  • Alison Gibbs - 10 years ago

    I regularly hear 'my children are in school' when people mean that their children are of school age and so 'go to school' or 'are at school' (depending on the situation).

    However, I also regularly hear Americans complaining about Britishisms in American English (particularly, apparently, in the form of British swearing). Maybe we're all just influencing each other more and a merged, more international form of English is evolving.

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