Why we should not have gotten mad at use of Americanisms

FOR some, they are the linguistic equivalent of nails down a blackboard, sure to leave them wincing at the abuse of the English language.

But it may be time to give up the fight against Americanisms, Susie Dent the Countdown lexicographer, has said, as she argues they are often closer to the true origin of words.

Dent speculated that popular hatred of Americanisms, and belief that they represent dumbing down, was a “vestige of colonial imperialism”, and the result of a “long-held grudge towards a superpower”.

In fact, Dent said, American spellings can be traced back to Shakespeare, the fashion for turning nouns into verbs back to Keats, and ending words with “ize” rather than “ise” closer to the words’ Greek origins.

“In all my years in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner, the subject most guaranteed to rankle with our viewers is the presence of Americanisms in the dictionary,” Dent writes in this week’s Radio Times.

“Groans such as these leave me baffled. My replies, once quiet and balanced, have become louder over the years, fuelled by my knowledge of a single fact. I love American English, not least because a lot of it was ours to begin with. Indeed, many Americanisms can be found in the works of William Shakespeare.”

Examples of the words that “provoke such horror”, she said, were in use in Britain long before the Pilgrim Fathers sailed. In particular, Dent singled out the US spelling on “honor”, which she claims can be found 500 times in Shakespeare’s First Folio: 100 times more than the English “honour”.

“Center” is also used more than “centre”, she said, and “humor” more than “humour”, while the word “gotten” is also used by Shakespeare.

On Saturday, Dent will present a Radio 4 documentary entitled Americanize!: Why the Americanisation of English is a Good Thing.

It follows an episode of Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, in which the author Matthew Engel argued that the trend to adopt words from across the pond “does matter”. He continued: “What it means is this incredible loss of biodiversity. At a time when Britain’s identity as a nation is in doubt, is under discussion, we have to ask ourselves: is this what we really want?”