Americanisms

Very often, British people tend to get their “knickers in a twist” over ‘Americanisms’, the use of so called American words in British English. But is it really all that harmful? The answer, quite simply, is probably not. In fact, these Americanisms have positive impacts on our language more often than not in all honesty.

They offer more expressive and interesting phrases to the table making our language more vibrant.

They appear socially useful as well. For example, the term ‘guy’ is used as a gender neutral term and greeting. In today’s society this becomes even more useful.

In truth, many of these so called Americanisms aren't even American and are indeed closer to traditional English than the British alternative. One of the ones that make most Brits infuriated, trash, is actually found in Shakespeare’s plays, which means it is closer to the language we used 400 years ago than our alternative ‘rubbish’. So why do people grow so angry over them, when it isn’t even truly American?

We actually use many terms that are American willingly, maybe without realising, so what is the need to grow angry over the ones we do see as alien when there are many that we willingly integrate? For example, the term ‘stiff upper lip’. We know this as the term used to describe us, and it is used often. Yet this phrase was first used in Massachusetts. We use this so willingly even though it is American but the ones we view as ‘alien imports’ make many furious when in reality we use American terms without noticing very often.

It could be seen as simplifying language, with simpler spellings where seemingly useless letters are removed (colour becomes color for example). Could this be viewed as making it easier to learn. Along with growing online communities, the presentation of different spellings could confuse young children learning to spell (these young children do now spend time online) so adopting the simpler spelling wouldn't be so harmful and could actually benefit as the simpler spelling would likely be easier to grasp and they have already been exposed to it.

Besides, as previously mentioned, the online community is growing, and many influencers on social media are American. In a generation that lives on social media, the mix of the two languages is inevitable as we see it used commonly online. Furthermore, in a world where it’s suddenly acceptable to speak to strangers online based on interests, many people are making friends from across the pond and that is where some confusion roots from. Some of these people you meet online become amazing friends and you speak nearly everyday. Because of this, teens are bound to pick up on some of their ways of saying things and use them without realising. The mix of the language creates what could be a simpler language, where there is only one word for everything and you don’t end up ‘arguing’ with American friends over who is right. If it was to simplify in this way there would also be no aggression surrounding the differences, simply because there wouldn’t be any. This may not even need to be written if we could just accept one word for ‘trash’ or ‘rubbish’ or whatever it’s actually called.