TO PROTEST THE STEADY influx of Americanisms into British English is to fight a losing battle. Back in 1935, Alistair Cooke announced that “Every Englishman listening to me now unconsciously uses 30 or 40 Americanisms a day”.
In his book That’s the Way It Crumbles: The, Matthew Engel writes that we’re now using more like 300 or 400 of them. By 2120, he suggests, Americanisms will have completely absorbed the English language. Bummer, right?