to wonder when UK English got so Americanised?

[Ringsender2]

I've read 2 threads this morning where people have gone to the 'store'. Then there's the 'gotten' and 'mom' thing. I feel like a spluttering Basil Fawlty saying this, but when did English in the UK lose its identity so much? Was Friends the start of the rot or was it earlier?

Oh I do hate English people saying "hey" - it sounds so affected.

And movies.

My most hated is "uni" but we can't pin that on the Americans.

I would 100% prefer to hear mom than mam. Urgh it just goes through me.

Mummy makes me want to vomit.

English hasn't lost its identity, it's doing what language always has and will: it's evolving and adapting in line with prevailing political, economic and social influences. Right now the main influence on English (and most other languages) is American English mostly because of the US's vast economic strength and military power. It has proliferated and self-seeded into other languages via use of movies (mostly produced in the States) television news and programming (most prolific production in the States) and now the Internet.

Once upon a time it was Latin when the Romans were in power, Germanic and Nordic when the Vikings invaded, French from the Normans, Spanish and Amerindian languages through the discovery of the New World, Indian as the British Empire expanded. Had Germany won WW2 we'd be speaking a strongly germanicized version of English at best if we were allowed to speak English at all because German would the official language. If we removed all the words that came to us from those languages English would be pretty much a series of clicks and grunts. This is nothing new, you don't have to like it but you might as well relax and accept it because you can't stop it.

As far as words like movie and store and tv season are concerned well, I'm leaning towards Amerenglish there. Movie comes from moving pictures, neat and condensed and accurately descriptive in its simplicity. Film is a bit of a misnomer since it doesn't tell you what it actually is other than the medium it was filmed on, plus it's an anachronism since movies are no longer made on film. Store, well you don't have department shops in the UK do you? And a shop in the USA is really a condensation of workshop or shopfloor, a factory or a place where things are made rather than a place where you buy things. My BIL works in an auto parts shop for example, not a place where they sell auto parts but a place where they make auto parts. Seasons for tv series comes about because they are seasonal rather than year round so each new series of a given shows comes out at a similar time of year to the last one*. See? It kinda makes sense when you look at it.

*except Game of Thrones because the producers of that are sadistic, making everyone wait bastards.

I am not convinced about season for series, especially when the series has episodes where episode two takes up where one left off. I could just about accept season for say a series of plays where each one is different but just in the same time slot.

The one which gets me is children being 'raised'. It used to be 'brought up' (or badly brought up as the case may be), so I cringe when I hear programmes set in war time or the fifties where people say this.

Then again there is protest, instead of protest against. Like a person protests their innocence. This does not mean that they are admitting they are guilty.

A newspaper favourite is 'staffer'. Why not journalist, or reporter?

You also see Americans saying 'bollocks', wanker and 'twat' and a lot of other British words that they would not have habitually used in the past.

True, but they pronounce twat to rhyme with what.

Another odd Americanism I've seen that might be regional is 'shoppe' - and not preceded by 'ye olde' or anything else that might explain it, but where I'd expect to see 'store' (or just 'shop' in Britain).

AppStore, Department Store, Apple Store, Play Store, Store cards are routinely used in the UK.
B&M are officially B&M Bargains Store.

I want to import you plural to English.

Some west coast Irish people say Ye for you plural and I want this to take off.

Some east coast people say yous for you plural but I dont like that.

@missmapp

Well actually I disagree. A season is one run of episodes while a series is the entire thing.

And department store has always been British English phrase, hasn’t it? I have the Ladybird In A Big Store which was published in 1973 (and based on Bentalls in Kingston).

TV series confuses me. What do you call a TV programme with more than one episode? Programme doesn’t it it as it doesn’t differentiate from one-off programmes. Saying ‘that’s from series two of a particular long-running TV series’ seems confusing and awkward.

Please tell me we will never serve marshmallows cooked on top of green beans and condensed mushroom soup and call it a casserole? No American would ever, EVER serve that, how revolting. The marshmallows go on top of sweet potatoes. The green bean casserole is topped with fried onions.

Lots of people from the US and all over the world use MN. Most of us don't alter our speech to match yours because we'd feel stupid and like we were putting it on, so yes you're going to see language usage that doesn't match what's used in the UK.

‘-ize’ isn’t an Americanism. Common but entirely wrongly-held belief. Similarly, ‘diaper’ and ‘gotten’ are English, originally. Totally agree, however, that ‘meet with’ and ‘visit with’ are absolutely awful, and drive me round the bend. ‘Can I get’ instead of ‘May I have’ goes without saying. ‘Mad at ‘ instead of ‘angry with’ and ‘pissed’ rather than ‘pissed off’ are also become prevalent, which is upsetting.

I get irritated when my DC talks about his "pinky." Yurgh! It's a Little Finger FFS! Pinky sounds creepy.

Balloon pinky is Scottish.

Gotten is Scottish dialect too.

Halloween has ancient Celtic origins and has been celebrated in Scotland and Ireland for many years, it’s not an American import.

Santa is also Scottish usage.

The English language has always changed when it has close contact with another culture. The Romans, the Vikings, the Normans all added substantial amounts of vocabulary to English. We gained other words through the British Empire too.

It’s ridiculous to suggest the language should remain static now when it never has done previously.

American spellings are mostly the original British spellings. We changes our spellings during the fifteen and sixteen hundreds to add in u’s and re’s all over the place because we though it made us look posher and closer to Latin and French usage.

Finally there are people from all over the world on this site. There are actual Americans as well as British people (like me) living in the US who have adopted words like store and restroom.

Mostly OP you just need to get over yourself.

Series for both the entire run of something and the individual season's run has never seemed confusing to me. The thing is we don't have such set seasons as US TV does so it doesn't make as much sense for us to say season 1, 2, 3 etc. Series 1, 2, 3 works fine - and you can refer to the whole thing as a series too. A series of series

Haven’t RTFT but I agree with you, OP.
My pet hates are Santa Claus (it’s Father Christmas) and drugstore (which I see on here a lot).

I know! One that bugs me is when people say season 1 or 2 etc for a UK show. It's a series!

questionablemouse but series 1,2 Tec has always been used without confusion. There are only 4 seasons- autumn, winter spring and summer

How long before we do thanksgiving? Can't we think of our own ideas?!

Thanksgiving was your idea (if you’re English, that is). It’s based on English church Thankgivings for a good harvest. The first people to observe it in the Americas were British.

I get irritated when my DC talks about his "pinky." Yurgh! It's a Little Finger FFS! Pinky sounds creepy.

As others have pointed out, Pinky/pinkie is a Scots word brought to North America by Scottish settlers.

Yes! Quite. Can you get it? I suppose you could, if you can vault the counter and grab it.

"Can I get" is grammatically correct and is also used in parts of Scotland. The only thing that one can quibble with grammatically in "can I get" is the use of "can" rather than "may." The definition of "get" is "to come to have or hold (something); receive". So "can I get" is as correct as "can I have." "Get" does not have some sort of built-in reflexive as so many posters on MN seem to think.

Supper makes my skin crawl, and it is distinctly British.

Supper is widely used in the US, especially in the South as another word for an informal dinner.

Also, a lot of the American words and spellings you see on MN are from actual Americans. There are quite a few of us on here.

Who the fuck is Father Christmas? It's Santa.

A series of series

Imprecise! As an Australian I’ll reserve my right to go with the best option.

There are only 4 seasons- autumn, winter spring and summer

Nonsense! Season ticket, season pass, sell-out season at the Globe, wet season, dry season...

I was minding my friends 5 year old recently. She came into the kitchen, asked if she could have some apple pie or cookies and did we have any soda?

It has always been Santa Claus in Ireland (and I suspect Scotland) thank you very much.

Chuggachuggatoottoot it's probably not a "show" though, it's a programme ;-)

English is a mongrel language - it can't degrade itself

Nearly all languages are mongrel languages, some more than others. This concept really annoys me, English isn’t even up there with most bastardized language!

HildaZelda (and others) how come such young children use the American English word instead of the British English word? For example "soda" instead of "fizzy drink". Do these children actually spend more time watching Americans speak on Youtube/TV/other media than they spend speaking to their family and friends (who are probably not American). Or are they speaking like this because it's trendy?