Americans are chuffed as chips at British English
Why doesn’t the affection run both ways?
British intellectuals enjoy bewailing the influx of Americanisms into the language of the mother country. The BBC once asked British readers to send in the Americanisms that annoyed them most and was flooded with thousands of entries, including “24/7”, “deplane” and “touch base”. Matthew Engel, a writer who had kicked off the conversation with an article on unwanted Americanisms, even turned the idea into a book, “That’s the Way It Crumbles”, in 2017.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “What’s your ⇔cup of tea?”
Culture October 12th 2024
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