Letter: Uncle Sam’s takin’ us over, y’all
Monday 19th April 2010, 6:31AM BST.
The new flag of Great Britain was a controversial choice...
Letter: How rereshing was Matt Lakin’s contribution (April 4) on the corrosion of our language by US imports.
On an almost daily basis new evidence emerges. Not only are good English words being usurped by spurious American ones, but our pronunciation is gradually becoming their pronunciation.
Linguists will tell us that this is nothing more than evolution of the language. It is nothing of the sort. Evolution concerns our language being added to, not changed.
No, what we have here is the UK tongue being hijacked, not evolving. For the life of me I cannot understand why this is being accepted.
Paradoxically, it is very often those people who loudly proclaim that the EU or immigration is undermining the British identity who are most guilty of this foreign usage and are content, even eager, to see the UK become a pointless little appendage of the USA. Neither is it just at street level that the problem lies.
Hardly a week goes by without some new government initiative (in education or health or law and order or whatever), being announced and preceded by the phrase “American style”.
We blindly stumble after the Americans in everything from the spoken word, to attitudes to domestic issues, to international crises. This is particularly questionable when you bear in mind that America has one of the highest rates of social problems per head of population in the western world.
Leaving aside the pros and cons of EU membership, we should not forget that we are Europeans, not Americans, the “special relationship” is a dead duck and we should stop hanging on to Washington’s ankles. It is degrading.
Ian Liston
Wellington
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Are you insane, Mr. Liston? You have failed to cite a single example to back up your bizarre and jingoistic claim.
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Like it or not, evolution of our language does very much involve it changing. It always has and always will.
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..It happens (often, in history).
Not much we can do about it ‘me old chump’. The dominant culture always imposes its’ own ways, means and language. Britain did it in empire days, the French did it in their empire days, (and so on). Now, with American cultural imperialism rife world-wide (led by the big US corps.) it’s just a matter of time before that fades and another one comes along.
Lets face it, USanian was easier to learn than Chinese will be.
There is no conpiracy, but it will be televised.
Its no good making politics out of it, your about 60 years to late. “must do better”.
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Gimme a break, that’s like, so not cool! Don’t be such a jerk – you need a check-up from the neck up. Jeez Louise, don’t you have anything better to worry about, homeslice? No? Oh, sorry, my bad.
Laterz, dude.
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Is that some form of code, old chap?
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In all seriousness, people here have absolutely nothing to worry about – the American language is never going to infiltrate the country so successfully as, say, the grey squirrel.
I was really surprised the last time I went back home to the States to hear one of my friends say that he’d ‘pulled’. We *never* use that word, when I moved here eight years ago I’d never heard that phrase, has no idea what it meant. But people back home have been hearing it in British movies and now it’s something people say. But you’d never hear someone back home saying ‘the American tongue is being hijacked.’ We just get on with it, and think ‘Wow, what’s that word you just used? Where’s that from?’ (yes, I know not to end in a preposition, just go with it) I love when I go back and I hear people using British words, you just might not realise it’s happening because if you go visit the States and you hear a British phrase you might not know that it’s not normally spoken, whereas when I go home I can pick it out straight away, and I think the language crossover is pretty great.
I’m really sorry Mr Liston feels so strongly about this, but it does go both ways and you should learn to embrace it, life’s too short.
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Incidentally, the phrase “what we have here is the UK tongue being hijacked” in the original letter is interesting because “hijacked” is an American word. It is supposed to have come from gangsters stealing cargo lorries/trucks. I read somewhere that after stopping the vehicle the robber would say to the driver “Hi, Jack”.
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Wasn’t there a similar letter to this printed about a month ago??
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If you’re so concerned about language, perhaps you should start by working on your sloppy use of split infinitives.
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Let me tell you Mr Liston. I live in the United States and when I come home to the UK I still hear people speaking with English accents and using English Phrases (Sorry British) as I’m Scottish. So let me see we have us Jocks with our accents and sayings, We have Liverpudlians (Scoucers) with their accents and sayings. Newcastle (Geordies) people with their accents and sayings etc. The Welsh, and of course the Londoners and last but not least the upper class chappies with their posh accents and saying.
Sure the United States has an effect on our lives and language and always has since the early days of Hollywood but taking over the English language NO.
Let me also inform you in this world of easy travel and communications some “modern” English words and sayings have crept into the every day American vocabulary.
Many Americans watch BBC America and public tv channels with our Britsih programes and comedies. Last of the Summer Wine, Keeping up Appearances, Dr Who! (Yes the good Dr has been teleported accross the expanses of the Atlantic in his Tardus)
Rarely does a day go by without someone saying how they love my accent and don’t ever lose it!
The British accent is alive and well loved throughout the world and no The United States isn’t trying to force their accents their ways of life on good old Blighty.
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I do think the letter writer needs to get over it,or get a life,this is on par with they have moved the times they screen coronation street.However it all adds color to his life i suppose :)
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I would actually deport all those who use Americanisms in place of a perfectly good homegrown alternative.
If it doesn’t make you cringe when an English person comes out with ‘ON the weekend’ or ‘Monday THROUGH Friday’, it really should.
And don’t get me started on ‘riiight?’ as a tag question. Grrr.
That British people so readily absorb US words, phrases and grammatical constructs only adds to the American sense of superiority, so let’s be a little more careful about what we say and write.
For the record, there’s plenty of things I like and admire about America, but our ridiculous cap-doffing (not just in linguistics, by the way) must stop.
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Hear hear!. I agree with the letter writer. This country is being slowly eroded by a country that is rife with this own problems yet not only do we want to embrace it we want to just become another state. But why America?. Why can’t we follow direction from other great countries? What is the obsession?
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He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson
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Having wrote the original letter that Mr Lister responded to, and having too come under rather fierce criticism by a printed letter within the Shropshire Star I felt the need for reply.
In my original letter I was not criticising the American way or indeed the way our language is changing. I agree with other writers, our language is already a make up of various nations and timeframes (German, French, Latin etc). I would argue we are a mongrel of languages. I feel it goes far deeper.
My issue was one of national identity. I am a patriotic person and whilst I won’t be waving the flag this Friday feel that if we had more identity and wasn’t so keen to give this up, maybe we could become better as a nation. It’s not about criticising others, it’s about celebrating what we already have that’s good and not being so keen to just ‘push it aside’.
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Having wrote the original letter that Mr Liston responded to, and having too come under rather fierce criticism by a printed letter within the Shropshire Star I felt the need for reply.
In my original letter I was not criticising the American way or indeed the way our language is changing. I agree with other writers, our language is already a make up of various nations and timeframes (German, French, Latin etc). I would argue we are already a mongrel of languages. I feel it goes far deeper.
My issue was one of national identity. I am a patriotic person and whilst I won’t be waving the flag this Friday feel that if we had more identity and wasn’t so keen to give this up, maybe we could become better as a nation. It’s not about criticising others, it’s about celebrating what we already have that’s good and not being so keen to just ‘push it aside’.
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美語。 他們确实是未來!
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“Evolution concerns our language being added to, not changed”…check the meaning of evolution. Our language has changed and evolved over hundreds and thousands of years. People today would find the English as spoken in Chaucer’s time foreign. American English would largely be familiar to Victorians but not to us. The English spoken in the US has also been contributed by other linguistic groups. And so to our version of English. Aside from the multiple European influences there are also the impacts of empire. Khaki, bungalow, jodhpur etc. If we attempt to keep the English language in some protected bubble we will only delay natural development of our tongue. TV and film are minor influences on global languages. We have to simply accept that change occurs.
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Jake, I still can’t find the split infinitive…
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Ian, of course language changes; otherwise we would still be speaking Anglo-Saxon. Take a look at entymology the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
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Pat (comment #19),
Personally, I’m not bothered about split infinitives, but at a quick glance there are at least two in the letter.
‘Loudly proclaim’ and ‘blindly stumble’ are the two that I spotted.
Whilst I find much mildly annoying about the lazy use of American English where a UK English word would do, I find the increasingly common speech impediment known as ‘th fronting’ of much greater concern.
It worries me that we have so many adults in this country who cannot talk without replacing the letters ‘th’ with either an ‘f’ or a single or double ‘v’. E.g. ‘my bruvver’, ‘wiv’, ‘one, two, free, four’.
The rise in this affliction appears to have coincided with the popularity of Eastenders, and the spread of ‘Mockney’ across a broader area of the UK.
Whilst it may be endearing in small children to hear such a fault in language, in adults it just makes them sound a bit… well… ‘fick’!
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Peter [#21] talks about “th-fronting”. I had this speech impediment for many years but managed to teach myself to say “th” correctly. He is right to mention Mockney but there are some people, like me, who have suffered this embarrassing speech impediment without it being through ignorance nor mimicking television.
We could also mention Shropshire folk who turn the word “school” into a two syllable word with the second syllable being “wool” so that it is said “skoo-wool”. Interesting. At least the Americans can manage to say school correctly…
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