To ask if do (or will) miss British English?

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

License plate - Number plate
Driver's license - Driving licence
Windshield - Windscreen
Envision - Envisage
Bring (instead of take)

So much British English is being replaced with the US versions.

UK courtroom dramas now feature lawyers shouting "objection!" and judges saying "sustained" - something that never actually happens in UK courts but the writers have all grown up watching US dramas and films.

I know it's inevitable but I celebrated the little differences - they seem to become fewer and fewer each year.

Maybe a kindly USian could confirm it's mutual, and that they can understand British English, although if they had to say the same thing they'd never actually use that form of words?

@DGRossetti

As an American living in the UK, it really depends. I can figure out that 'carpark' is a parking lot, for example, but it's not very obvious what the boot of a car is.

Interestingly, when I first moved to the UK I worked at a restaurant where literally everyone had English as a second language, but it was British English. So when I asked where to find the silverware or the trash can, they had no idea what I was talking about, whereas perhaps a native British English speaker might have figured it out?

(That is why I picked up British English very quickly, which my American friends found very annoying]

@MoonRiverLaLaLa

I'm from Texas and say "y'all" frequently, as do many of my fellow Texans. You don't hear that in NY or California!

I wish everyone would say "y'all"
It's much better than "you guys" or that horrible "yous".

'youse' is also Irish isn't it?

We say it on the US East Coast but my Irish friends over here also say it so I assumed that's where we got it

Did you just mean standard cutlery, which is probably stainless steel, rather than silver cutlery?

I live in an area of Scotland where we had our own words for things when I was little. Nowadays kids are more likely to use American words so it's going to die out. I shudder when asked about an eraser, recess or diapers.

Do Americans adopt our words into their language? I think not.

@Peregrina

Did you just mean standard cutlery, which is probably stainless steel, rather than silver cutlery?

I just meant silverware : ) I never heard the word cutlery until I moved to the UK.

In my part of the US we call everything silverware, whatever it's made out of, unless it's super fancy and then it might be called 'the silver'

Whereas my colleagues had only ever learned the word cutlery

I was also very confused the first time a customer asked me for squash to drink, because in the US squash only refers to vegetables!

15:24Skyll

I'm not in England, have never lived in England. I'm an islander from an area that I would have expected to fall into the category you're referring to. I think you like being offended.

I study linguistics so we examine this kind of thing a lot there is evidence of a worldwide shift towards a 'global English', largely due to technology, so the influence of things such as Netflix and social media may be contributing to the sort of changes you describe

I don't like the now commonplace Stay Home - it should be Stay at Home.

Or Teach School, instead of teaching in School or Teach English, or Maths or whatever!

@DGRossetti not sure what you mean.. if I remember correctly American English diverged because the pioneers of the first dictionaries there deliberately wanted to make a distinction between British and us English, that said the idea of 'real' or 'correct' English is quite outdated now, and linguists tend to opt for a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach

Didn't FDR use "Normalcy" ? So it's hardly new.

I like catching odd snippets in US TV shows that must have sneaked past the script editors from a British writer. Law & Order:Criminal Intent was a hotspot. In one episode an American character talked about needing to go to "the loo". In another a character was described as "nicking" stuff. Which I am pretty sure are not in everyday usage in New York.

I wish everyone would say "y'all"
It's much better than "you guys" or that horrible "yous".

We should bring back "thou" - then "you" can just be plural.

@Peregrina

I don't like the now commonplace Stay Home - it should be Stay at Home.

Or Teach School, instead of teaching in School or Teach English, or Maths or whatever!

Or work a job! Although you mainly hear that phrase when people have more than one job, so "he works two jobs to make ends meet".

@Bagamoyo1

I agree OP. And on all these threads you see the same thing - people saying “but language evolves”. This isn’t evolution though. Evolution is things like new phrases developing eg “girl power” when the Spice Girls started. What we have now is just people trying to be cool by adopting americanisms. I hate it.

So do I.

So much of what MN despairs at for being 'American' English is actually from Scotland and Ireland.

Are any of the examples I gave from Ireland/Scotland? I am English but have spent a lot of time in Ireland and Scotland and I think they would apply equally

The use of 'bring' and 'take' is a bit different in Ireland OP. Here's an extract from Wikipedia's article on Hiberno-English -

'Irish use of these words differs from that of British English because it follows the Irish grammar for beir and tóg. English usage is determined by direction; a person determines Irish usage. So, in English, one takes "from here to there", and brings it "to here from there". In Irish, a person takes only when accepting a transfer of possession of the object from someone else – and a person brings at all other times, irrespective of direction (to or from).'

I use the word gotten all the time EarringsAndLipstick, as in "the weather's gotten worse (again)"

Back again!
Mac and cheese... it's macaroni cheese ffs!
More worrying is American pronounciation - noos rather than news, etc

@EBearhug

I wish everyone would say "y'all" It's much better than "you guys" or that horrible "yous".

We should bring back "thou" - then "you" can just be plural.

Only if we are also allowed to insult people by saying "thou" instead of "thee". Or is it the other way around ?

More worrying is American pronounciation - noos rather than news, etc

"Noos" is an American pronunciation, not the American pronunciation. We Southerners say "news."

Mac and cheese... it's macaroni cheese ffs!

Says you

350 million Americans say differently

Maybe just let it go

@DGRossetti

Didn't FDR use "Normalcy" ? So it's hardly new.

I like catching odd snippets in US TV shows that must have sneaked past the script editors from a British writer. Law & Order:Criminal Intent was a hotspot. In one episode an American character talked about needing to go to "the loo". In another a character was described as "nicking" stuff. Which I am pretty sure are not in everyday usage in New York.

The word actually appeared somewhat earlier, but it was President Warren G. Harding who gave it currency beginning in 1920.

I don't think FDR used it. He spoke a type of mid-Atlantic English, both in accent and substance.

There is a huge difference between finding it jarring that British people in Britain are using American terms, and thinking that all the other countries are 'doing English wrong'

Quite a bit of the latter on this thread sadly

American or Irish or Australian or whatever English is not 'wrong' it's just different

In my part of the US we call everything silverware, whatever it's made out of, unless it's super fancy and then it might be called 'the silver'

Same for my part of the country. It's all silverware, from plastic to stainless steel to Tiffany silver. We might say "the sterling silver" especially this time of year when people bring it out to use at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

@RaraRachael

I live in an area of Scotland where we had our own words for things when I was little. Nowadays kids are more likely to use American words so it's going to die out. I shudder when asked about an eraser, recess or diapers.

Do Americans adopt our words into their language? I think not.

There are a few Scots or Scottish English words used frequently in American English: "pinkie," "wee," "blather," "caddy." But these are not so much adopted as organic from Scottish settlers and immigrants.

My favorite Scottish borrowing into American usage is "high school." That comes directly from the first school to call itself a high school, the Royal High School in Edinburgh.

I work for a global company, and US English is what I hear and read all day. I don't think I use the Americanisms, but it's not something I'd actively avoid. I've picked up all sorts of colloquialisms from the various parts of Britain I've lived in, and so far nobody has had an issue with me using them out of region.

Everyone including my DH says 'gotten' now, I often hear it on TV too. Drives me mad.