[lg policy] That ugly Americanism? It may be British.

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

That ugly Americanism? It may be British.

Matthew Engel is a British journalist who doesn't like Americanisms. The Financial Times columnist told BBC listeners that American English is an unstoppable force whose that vile, ugly, and pointless new usages are invading England "in battalions." He warned readers of his regular FT column that American imports like truck, apartment, and movies are well on their way to ousting native lorries, flats, and films.
 
Engel’s tirade against the American “faze, hospitalise, heads-up, rookie, listen up” and “park up” got several million page views (or page impressions, as the Brits seem to call them), along with thousands of comments, when it appeared in the BBC News Magazine.
 
But like many critics of Americanisms, Engel got some of his facts wrong. True, the U.S. may be influencing the spread of English as a world language today, but it was British imperialism, not American, that set English on the path to world domination.
 
Plus, a few of the words Engel complains about aren’t even Americanisms. . . .
 
Read the rest of the post on: The Web of Language http://bit.ly/nNdsFh


____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English                    
University of Illinois 
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801                                               

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20110731/dc4d2ebd/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list