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Is American English Going To Take Over British English Completely? (scroll.in)
Paul Baker, writing for The Conversation: Brits can get rather sniffy about the English language -- after all, they originated it. But a Google search of the word "Americanisms" turns up claims that they are swamping, killing and absorbing British English. If the British are not careful, so the argument goes, the homeland will soon be the 51st State as workers tell customers to "have a nice day" while "colour" will be spelt without a "u" and "pavements" will become "sidewalks." My research examined how both varieties of the language have been changing between the 1930s and the 2000s and the extent to which they are growing closer together or further apart. So do Brits have cause for concern? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, most of the easily noticeable features of British language are holding up. Take spelling, for example -- towards the 1960s it looked like the UK was going in the direction of abandoning the "u" in "colour" and writing "centre" as "center." But since then, the British have become more confident in some of their own spellings. In the 2000s, the UK used an American spelling choice about 11% of the time while Americans use a British one about 10% of the time, so it kind of evens out. Automatic spell-checkers which can be set to different national varieties are likely to play a part in keeping the two varieties fairly distinct. [...] But when we start thinking of language more in terms of style than vocabulary or spelling, a different picture emerges. Some of the bigger trends in American English are moving towards a more compact and informal use of language. American sentences are on average one word shorter in 2006 than they were in 1931. Americans also use a lot more apostrophes in their writing than they used to, which has the effect of turning the two words "do not" into the single "don't." They're getting rid of certain possessive structures, too -- so "the hand of the king" becomes the shorter "the king's hand." Another trend is to avoid passive structures such as "a paper was written," instead using the more active form, "I wrote a paper."
>> American English Going To Take Over British English Completely?
Doubt it. Whatever's spoken in India will probably be the winner, and that's a mismash of British education, American use and Indian application (e.g., "do the needful").
With the amount of US TV programmes aired on this side of the Atlantic, it's getting harder and harder to differentiate between the too, mainly because of the amount of American English that has crept in to daily use. And, of course, the ubiquitous use of the Internet, where everything blends.
I sometimes find myself debating with myself what the correct term is for various items. I'm probably one of the few that doesn't talk about 'cupcakes' (preferring Queen cake), or who might only use 'cupcakes' for the variation that has more icing that cake. I find myself using 'throttle' instead of 'accelerator', although I never use 'gas pedal'. By others, 'Sidewalk' (over pavement or path) is become more and more used, and I'd suggest that Kelly Clarkson has something to do with this (Because of You).
Spelling gets harder too. Some words, like colour and centre (and the other -our and -re words), are fine, probably because we are more aware of these being 'wrong' on your side of the Atlantic. :P But words ending in -ize or -ise can start to get confusing. Spelling-wise, these would be the spellings I debate with myself more. Spell checkers don't always help unless you can be assured that you have the correct version of English installed -- some apps don't have British English, opting for only American English. So when you see something underlined in red, you tend to stop and think to yourself "I'm I wrong or is the computer?", and more often than it should be, it's the computer.
And looking up words online generally means finding the US English version of the word.
So, yeah, they are blending a lot, and there isn't much can be done about it. Thankfully kids here still say "zed" at the end of the alphabet, but I fear that'll change in the near future. "Trick or Treat" has also become prevalent here with kids going door to door for Hallowe'en - that's only in the last 20 years or so.
Globally, English in general is dominant because of previous colonial activities by the British Empire and the prevalence of American entertainment and Internet properties. Having most of the Internet Anglo-centric is a big driver...most online discussions are in English unless it's very region-specific. Software development is a kind-of-English activity for the most part...even if someone isn't a native speaker, they're usually communicating with colleagues in English.
What remains to be seen is whether the US will continue dominating global politics, culture and the Internet. China and India have over a billion people. I do think that as these societies mature, they present a pretty big challenge to English as the dominant language. India has an official language of English but that doesn't mean most of the population speaks it natively or is even bilingual. I think that a combination of the US and UK becoming more insular and the rise of China as a world power will shift the balance...not right away but slowly. One thing China has that the US/UK doesn't, for better or worse, is a semi-authoritarian government. They can basically make whatever they need to happen, happen -- look at how much money they threw into infrastructure to blunt the force of the 2008 financial crisis. Their current plan seems to be reaching out to developing countries in sort of a soft colonialism, doing infrastructure projects and other activities to gain influence. If these activities bring the language along with them, then I could definitely see the balance tipping away from English somewhat.
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So perhaps the question should be - is Business English taking over American English and British English? With the corollary - is Business English closer to British English or American English?
Canada also traditionally uses British English as well; I'm almost 30yrs out of elementary school, are they still spelling colour with a 'u' in Canadian schools?
Actually, linguists say the British accent circa the Elizabethan period would have sounded closes to the American southern accent. In related news, Shakespeare performed using Original Pronunciation is fascinating.
and I read a lot of British origin books, or American books that were well over 100 years old and still retained some of the across the pond ways of doing things. Then as I got older and the Internet became a thing I wound up on a lot of websites either from the U.K. or at least heavily frequented by residents. I may speak with a bit of a Texas drawl, but I often catch myself writing "grey" almost as default and occasionally "centre" on rare occasion I'll insert a u, but that's a rare one for me. The fact the spell checkers in Firefox in my Debian derivative Linux distros seems to default to British English and swaps back even after being corrected on occasion doesn't exactly keep me in American spelling land. I've never gotten into the different ways of describing car types and their parts, nor words like nappy instead of diaper, but whatever got embedded in my head from reading every single Sherlock Holmes story in the sixth grade, the Bastard Operator from Hell in the early 2000's, and countless other bits of literature are rather well cemented.
Add in the touch of autism that I have that prevented me from realizing that having a larger than average vocabulary from where I grew up was why I got into so many fist fights - and it took one of the guys who was covered in bruises afterwards telling me why he started the fight for me to realize it - and I've had to commit myself to a mental game where I shut down my vocabulary with most company and only open up with a select group of geeks. I have found it's important not to let slip with British terms even when they're one of the few that I find I like better than our own in person. The Internet on the other hand doesn't seem to care with the exception of the occasional spelling or grammar Nazi, that deserves and gets ridicule in return.
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