I’ve just been reading that a survey by Oxford University Press of British children’s writing habits has found an increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.
American vocabulary and spelling with words such as garbage, candy, sneakers, trash can, sidewalk, and soda featuring in much of the children’s written school work.
Now I’m not too bothered by this as the British have always enriched their language by adopting ‘foreign’ words. Just think of how many words we use today which originated in places such as India and other parts of the good old ‘Empire’.
I know that English is a contrary language, but what I do find slightly annoying and often very amusing at the same time is the American ‘corruption’ of English regular verbs in their past tense. The obvious ones being .. “dove” .. instead of dived .. “pled” instead of pleaded .. and of course .. “snuck” instead of sneaked. A new one on me, which I came across recently is … “drug” instead of dragged; as in .. “being drug back to the dark ages“.
I don’t think that we will be .. “Two nations separated by a common language” .. for much longer, for we British are being drug by our children towards …
… the language of the future.
bigjohn 
