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There's nothing wrong with Americanisms: it's management-speak that is the enemy of English
   A study of childrenâs writing by the Oxford University Press suggests that our language is being Americanised. Of course English as spoken here and as spoken in the USA have always played off each other â understandably â and the influence of American films and, in the case of children and adolescents, American comics has been noticed for a long time. Orwell was writing about it in the 1930s. Sometimes of course what is regarded â with disapproval? â as American usage turns out to be something once usual in English as spoken or written here. One example is the American habit of saying âI guessâ where we might say âI thinkâ. To anyone who objects to this, you should quote Chaucer, who used âI guessâ in the American style.
   The examples of Americanisation culled by the researchers from OUP look pretty thin. Children apparently now write about cupcakes rather than fairy-cakes. Well, apart from the fact that cupcakes (or cup-cakes, as Chambers English Dictionary has it) are nothing new, I donât think they are the same as fairy-cakes, which, as I remember, are little sponge-cakes which have a butter-cream topping with a slice of sponge inserted in it at an angle.
   Chambers English Dictionary is a good guide, because Chambers has always taken an interest in American English. The 1872 edition included an eight-page appendix of Americanisms, printed in small type, three columns to the page. Nowadays it notes âU.S.â or âesp. U.S.â, if a word is more commonly found in American rather than English usage. However, quite often you find âdial.â â that is, dialect â âand U.S.â. This suggests that a word found in some British dialect has been carried across the Atlantic and become standard usage there. This is the case with âsnuckâ, used as the past tense of âsneakâ, and cited by the OUP researchers as an example of American infiltration. It would be equally true to say the word has been repatriated.
   Be that as it may, there is nothing that should worry us about this sort of American infiltration of the language. Not only is a colloquial Americanism likely to be lively, useful and agreeable; it is often an English word or expression that has fallen out of use here and is now restored to us.
   Tags: americanisms, chambers english dictionary, English, language