Language Change

Language Change by Philippa Law

Americanisation - Don't worry, it's not as bad as you might think

It's one issue that really gets people's goat: Americanisms. Tony Robinson from Cheltenham says, "In these days of mass communication it is sad to see the English language being battered by the ever advancing tide of Americanism." 

British English borrows lots of words from American English. Prioritise was apparently coined during the 1972 presidential election; teenager, blizzard and belittle originated in the USA and, unsurprisingly, there are umpteen computer-related terms that come from the United States.It's not always obvious to speakers where new words have emerged from. As Virginia Reed from California writes, "I thought incentivise was 'all your fault'!"Mark Hughes from Walsall doesn't like it either: "The thing that drives me demented is the rampant Americanisation of everything, especially British English, and the habit of turning nouns into verbs, such as prioritise and incentivise. Yuk!"

 The American linguist John Algeo notes a propensity in the UK to attribute changes in British English to the influence of the USA, whether it's justified or not: "The assumption is that anything new is American and thus objectionable on double grounds."An example of misattribution is the word controversy. Some people pronounce it with the stress on the first syllable: CONtroversy; others stress the second: conTROVersy. It's a widely-held belief that the second, newer pronunciation is an Americanism, but it isn't - it originated in the UK.And for those of you who don't like the phrase I guess..., did you know that the word gesse (for think or suppose) was common in England in the Middle Ages, and I gesse... crops up in Chaucer?Patsy from Cornwall deplores Americanisms: "Let us ensure that future generations learn to use English correctly. We should be aware that the English language originated in England and was taken from here to other English speaking countries."

She's right that English originated in England, but it's not right to imply that other varieties of English are versions of 'our' language. Americans don't speak a different version of British English; English speakers in the UK and the USA speak modern dialects which have both evolved from 16th century English. Today's British English is no nearer that common ancestor than American English is! As it happens, American English has been more conservative than British English in some respects. It has retained the third syllable of words like library and secretary, whilst many British dialects use the newer forms secretree and libree. Old words like diaper and fall are still used in America but have been replaced by new words (nappy and autumn) in Britain.Why do so many people hate Americanisms? The word itself suggests it's something to do with America, rather than linguistic borrowing in general. As the linguist Steve Jones points out: "Ever heard jodhpurs referred to as an 'Indianism' or karaoke as a 'Japism'?"He suggests that, "It would seem that when folk complain about the Americanisation of the language, their complaint is really about the insidious effect of Americanisation on our culture." Whatever your feelings are towards Americanisms, there's no reason to think we'll all turn American any time soon. As Peter Trudgill explains, our language is most influenced by the people we interact with, not by watching TV. Even though the American and British vocabularies are getting more similar, our accents and pronunciation are more different than they have ever been - and are growing further apart.

Influenced by others

Language also changes very subtly whenever speakers come into contact with each other. No two individuals speak identically: people from different geographical places clearly speak differently, but even within the same small community there are variations according to a speaker’s age, gender, ethnicity and social and educational background. Through our interactions with these different speakers, we encounter new words, expressions and pronunciations and integrate them into our own speech. Even if your family has lived in the same area for generations, you can probably identify a number of differences between the language you use and the way your grandparents speak. Every successive generation makes its own small contribution to language change and when sufficient time has elapsed the impact of these changes becomes more obvious.

Listen to these recordings in this section, which illustrate important, recent changes in spoken English. Consider the following statement and click on the highlighted words for more information about particular types of language change:

“we couldn’t listen to the latest tunes because we hadn’t a wireless”