There's nothing wrong with Americanisms: it's management-speak that is the enemy of English – Telegraph Blogs Thursday 24 January 2013 | Blog Feed | All feeds Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Home News World Sport Finance Comment Blogs Culture Travel Life Fashion Tech Dating Offers Jobs Film Music Art Books TV and Radio Theatre Dance Opera Photography Hay Festival Video In the Know Blogs Home » Culture » History » Allan Massie Allan Massie Allan Massie is a Scottish writer who has published nearly 30 books, including a sequence of novels set in ancient Rome. His non-fiction works range from a study of Byron's travels to a celebration of Scottish rugby. He has been a political columnist for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and writes a literary column for The Spectator. There's nothing wrong with Americanisms: it's management-speak that is the enemy of English By Allan Massie Literature Last updated: May 29th, 2012 Comment on this Comment on this article Cupcakes? Or fairy-cakes? Who cares? A study of children’s 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 – understandably – 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 – with disapproval? – 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 “I guess” where we might say “I think”. To anyone who objects to this, you should quote Chaucer, who used “I guess” 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 don’t 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. If children write about a “tuxedo” rather than a “dinner jacket” (and presumably think of a DJ as a disc-jockey rather than a garment), one may concede that this is an example of an American usage replacing a British one, and the only surprise is that they should be writing about the article of clothing in the first place. Actually I think some of us would reserve the word “tuxedo” – more commonly “tux” – for a white dinner jacket. It comes incidentally from “a fashionable club at Tuxedo Park in New York". Again one may concede that writing “sidewalk” rather than “pavement” represents the adoption of an American usage – though surely an unobjectionable one – but some of the other examples they give are not really American at all. A “garbage truck” may be an American term, but “garbage” as an alternative to “rubbish” or “refuse” is not exclusively American, any more than “truck” for “lorry” is, even if more common in the States. 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 “U.S.” or “esp. U.S.”, if a word is more commonly found in American rather than English usage. However, quite often you find “dial.” – that is, dialect – “and U.S.”. 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 “snuck”, used as the past tense of “sneak”, and cited by the OUP researchers as an example of American infiltration. It would be equally true to say the word has been repatriated. Two other examples they offer as “smart” in the sense of “clever” and “cranky” meaning “irritable”. I should have thought that “smart” has always been used in this sense here, as in “smarty”, “smart-alec” and “smarty-pants”, while Chambers offers “cross” as one of the meanings of “cranky”. 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. The American language we really should guard against is the management-speak promoted by business schools to baffle outsiders. Unfortunately this has been seized on so enthusiastically by bankers, businessmen and bureaucrats here that we don’t question its origins. Colloquial American is splendidly alive; management-speak is an abomination, an offence against the first purpose of language, which is to communicate meaning. Tags: americanisms , chambers english dictionary , English , language Recent Posts Don't worry, Dan Brown sceptics: his codes, symbols and conspiracies will be forgotten in a few years January 17th, 2013 9:19 Comment on this About time we lost the law against insult: we'd have had to lock up Dr Johnson and Groucho Marx, otherwise January 16th, 2013 11:00 Comment on this Everyone enjoys a really savage review (except the subject). But there are certain rules to be observed January 11th, 2013 7:28 Comment on this It's worth teaching imperial measures in school, not least to remind children of the old ways January 10th, 2013 14:10 Comment on this Enoch Powell was no fascist. 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