Should the Americanisation (or Americanization) of English worry us? | Rebecca Rideal
" Rebecca Rideal is a historian and author
"That's what this nation has been built on, proud men. Proud fucking warriors!" shouts Combo in one of the most well-known scenes from This Is England. What Combo would have thought of the recent report that the language of his beloved nation was becoming increasingly Americanised we can only imagine. But very few things have engendered as much debate as the language we speak - from Jonathan Swift's concerns in 1712 that English would fall from use like Latin, and Samuel Johnson's attempt in the mid-18th century to "preserve the purity" of the English language, to fresh claims that the "state of innocence" in which British English once existed has been "corrupted" by Americanisms. Perhaps we need to ask two questions: 1) What do modern anxieties about the English language say about us? 2) What does it mean to be English today?
The linguist David Crystal has argued that any pride taken in a native language may be "tinged with concern when you realise that other countries may not want to use the language in the same way". The truth is, the English language is not fixed and has undergone myriad changes over the centuries; absorbing words, phrases and spellings from all over the globe. Numerous dialects and regional peculiarities mean a linear view of its history is imperfect. Nevertheless, roughly speaking, there have been four key linguistic shifts: old English from the 5th century (Beowulf); Norman-influenced middle English from the 11th century (Chaucer); early modern English from the 15th century (King James bible/Shakespeare); and the emergence of modern English towards the end of the 17th century.
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