To hate Americanisms...?

[Groof]

I think maybe because it feels like all English-speaking cultures are becoming boring and homogenous.

New ones I've noticed that people in the UK didn't routinely say five years ago but are now EVERYWHERE:

• birth control (instead of 'contraception' or 'the pill')
• wait list (instead of waiting list)
• reach out

Which ones do you hate or AIBU?

Also isn't ginger a bit of pejorative? I've never seen anything but admiration for red hair here in the US.

@Annabella92
Pejorative? Not at all! At least not the way I've heard it used. Popular with my young adult son and his twenty-something friends.

(Sorry Annabella92 - didn't mean to @ you and can't seem to delete it!)

I guess Tim Minchin's 'Prejudice' wouldn't work in the US then

Lol no

Shag, yes

Ginger, a bit, mostly because Americans found out that redheads are bullied in the UK and can't believe it

Flat and fringe, no way

I think Ted Lasso got Americans saying wanker a lot more :)

EmeraldRoulette · Yesterday 23:22

I really like "gotten" as it makes sense

I could - not for the first time - be completely wrong...

I was taught that gotten was to have obtained something, as in ill-gotten gains.

You wouldn't have obtained on the bus...

Pejorative? Not at all! At least not the way I've heard it used. Popular with my young adult son and his twenty-something friends.

It's nice if it has lost that but it definitely was a pejorative back in the day. See post above re Tim Minchin.

I agree Ted Lasso might be responsible for most of the word traffic from UK to US.

Where I come from in the US the shag is a type of dance. I spent many hours at uni dancing it.

Whereas British students...

Don't you love words with multiple meanings? I saw shags shagging on Skye a couple of years ago. Rugs, haircut, tobacco....

Apologies for quoting myself but, for context AND a lovely wee amalgamation of filums, a bit of anti-American sentiment and a rhotic arse, here youse are:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ofpqyjACGFU

I'm surprised that more Americans aren't used to hearing the word fringe used to describe "bangs". Very popular with all the beauty bloggers and where I am I can't imagine walking into a salon and asking for " a layered bob with a long curtain fringe" and the stylist being confused.

https://www.southernliving.com/fashion-beauty/hairstyles/fringe-bangs

Ah yes, Beach Music and the Carolina Shag. There's a movie called "Shag". It's about the dance.😀

To have gotten on or in something means to have entered.

As well as meaning to have obtained, to have gotten can also mean to have become.
I’ve gotten tired, for example.

There may be other ways it’s used, but they’re the ones I can think of at the moment.

Yep, definitely snobs. I'm in NZ, we use a lot of Americanisms here, no-one cares.

I quite like Americanisms - except ‘grab’, which I always hear/read very literally. No need to grab things - just pick them up gently! And as for grabbing lunch: how absurd

Also, I would like to preserve the British usage of ‘fag’ on this side of the ocean - although I don’t know if that will be possible (or desirable) in the long term.

For as long as I remember I have been quite sad that in spelling, gaol has been replaced with jail.
A strange and enduring fixation of mine.

My technical grammar knowledge is crap, but gotten is just a particular tense of the verb to get.

I went to the shop, I got milk.

I should have gone to the shop, I would have gotten milk.

I think in some areas of England they use "got" in both of those, but not in Ireland, parts of Scotland, the US, Australia etc etc.

I once tried the Kraft boxed version which I thought might be useful in emergencies. Note the "once". It is an abomination. As is tinned macaroni cheese.

Language evolves and that is exactly what I find so fascinating about it. We don't speak or write in the same way as people in Shakespeare's time. In fact Shakespeare was keen on churning out new words and expressions, many of which have remained as part of modern language. But then he was English of course, not American, and there's nothing like a good old dose of xenophobia to bring people together.

I hear non Irish people using the word 'craic' sometimes and find it both funny and quite heartwarming. I will defend 'gotten' to my last breath! It is completely and utterly commonplace in NI and definitely not an 'Americanism' - not that it matters. Maybe I'm more relaxed about language changing because of the history of suppression of the Irish language. I can't help but think 'hell slap it up ye', as we like to say around these parts😆

Oh absolutely. I was just trying to give pp some examples of the senses in which it’s commonly used. It can mean much more than ‘obtained’.

I'm American and definitely not familiar with several of these Americanisms, it's a big country with huge regional variations though. This thread did remind me of this light-hearted sketch though :)

I'm American and definitely not familiar with several of these Americanisms, it's a big country with huge regional variations though. This thread did remind me of this light-hearted sketch though :)

Sorry I don't know why that posted twice!

What I hate, are people trying to convince others that words and events are Americanisms, when they have existed in this country for way longer than living memory - just not in the south of England.

Thinking as examples - gotten, Santa, trick or treating (although when I was child, it was called 'guising', but it was the same thing)

But Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North of England apparently don't count....

Oh god, where to start!

I spend a lot of time working the US and on calls with US customers which is bad enough but then hearing all the Americanisms when home drives me insane.

I've heard several British born and bred people using American pronunciations, now, too.

o-REG-ano for oregano
Bay-zel for basil
Rowt for route

Then there's "license plate" instead of number plate (and yes, it's always 'licenSe' instead of 'licenCe' when they do it.

Windshield instead of windscreen, etc., etc.

But I think - as has been mentioned multiple times already - "can I GET..." has to be the very worst Americanism we now seem to be lumbered with.