I Could Care Less

The influence of American English on British English no doubt infuriates the thousands, but we must ask ourselves what it is they’re so riled up about. Surely these literary pet hates are unnecessary?

 We do indeed speak a beautiful language but to denounce American English, one of the largest and most influential varieties, as if it’s some kind of abomination is ridiculous.

Now, there are many Americanisms which just don’t make sense, but we have plenty of those in British English too; idioms like ‘lost the plot’ and the endless synonyms we have for the word ‘idiot’ being a few of my favourites.

One of the biggest culprits for angering the Brits is the ‘Can I get a…?’ after the argument over the use of ‘can’ rather than ‘may’ has been settled it’s the use of ‘get’ rather than ‘have’ that really gets them on edge. On a radio spot in 2017 one man said that it wasn’t so much the phrase but the way it was said which angered him (‘This isn’t New York!’) and that people seemed to adopt an odd accent as they said it. Which makes me think that maybe people aren’t so mad about the words of which we find ourselves speaking, but more that American culture is creeping its way into everyone’s lives.

With America being at the top of the entertainment industry and the amount of TV, films and music we listen to its unsurprising that our language is changing. Is it really for the worst? I don’t think it is. The development of our language is fascinating, we no longer use words like ‘thee’ or ‘thou’ and in 2016 the Oxford English Dictionary added over a thousand new words.

New words and slang are being made up by teenagers every day and we all quite happily add these frankly strange phrases into our vocabulary (peng?), but we draw the line when these words are American? To me, and many others, this seems odd. English originates from so many different languages and it’s still developing as we find new ways to say what we mean.

Personally, I think that Americanisms are a positive thing. They show how our language is constantly developing. We don’t still speak old English and in a few centuries, English will again be spoken completely differently.

A lot of words we think are Americanisms originated from British English. One of the most noticeable being ‘trash’. Although this may seem like the American version of ‘rubbish’ it was first said by Shakespeare in Othello. American English is as greatly influenced by us as we are by them. Often the words we think are American they learnt from us a few hundred years ago. To hate Americanisms that aren’t even American really is quite silly.

There are entire organisations created to try and keep British English alive although research shows that there will be diversity in the language for a long time.

 Now I couldn’t care less about Americanisms, but I could care less about people’s acceptance of them. Just let it go, enjoy life, go watch a film or something- or should I say Movie.