Basically, like, we must save correct English...

If you still say “Please may I have a coffee” instead of “Can I get a coffee?” If you think that the words “basically, like” should be used sparingly, not in every sentence. If you register enthusiasm by saying “great” or “wonderful”, rather than “totally awesome”. If you think that the only correct use of “gotten” is in “only begotten son”. If you go and see a film rather than catch a movie. If you think that the use of “whatever” is intolerable and that its abbreviation, “whatevs”, is grounds for manslaughter. If you still say to your family, “Is everyone ready?” instead of “Let’s go, guys”. If you relax rather than chill, and prefer to order a “medium” rather than a “regular”. If, when asked how you are, you reply, “Fine” or “Very well, thank you”, not “I’m good”. If you are sick of people saying “sick” when they mean “ill”. If you think all that, my son, then I’m with you all the way. We are not alone, in standing up for English English; on the other hand, it now appears that we’re wrong.

Susie Dent, the language queen who reigns over Countdown on Channel 4, has pointed out that many of the words we scorn as Americanisms, or vulgar recent imports, are neither new nor especially American.

In fact, many of them come from Shakespeare. He was quite a fan of “gotten”, God help us (“Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge”

– Henry VI, Part 2), and used “friended” three times, four hundred years before Facebook.

I have no desire to pick a quarrel with the brilliant Dent, but enough is enough. My two children refused to master a foreign language, but they are fluent in the flip, sarcastic language of US sitcom, against which mere reason is futile. The mildest observation from their mother is met with an incredulous, “Well, duh!”, which is always accompanied by palms raised to the sky in the manner of Chandler in Friends.

Sorry. Up with this we will not put. Time to fight back. “Can I get a Coke?” “You certainly can get a Coke, darling, but you may not have one.” Your mother will never repress her inner English teacher. The impulse to preserve is still very strong, even if the language we’re preserving is itself a hodge-podge of other tongues. So, are you ready to, like, basically join me in the fight to keep our words and phrases safe? Let’s go, guys! Come along, chaps!