Many years ago, when I was a
schoolgirl in England, my beloved English teacher pulled me to the front of the
class to chastise me for using the word okay.
I was mortified as she explained to me and the rest of the class that okay was American slang, definitely not
proper English, and certainly not okay.
I, on the other hand, thought it
was the epitome of cool. I had picked it up from one of the many American TV
shows and movies we were, and still are, bombarded with. Now, many, many years
later, after living in the U.S. for more than half my life, I am amused at how specific
words, once used only in England, have almost vanished and been replaced by
Americanisms. I return to my native England at least once a year, and I never
fail to notice how English English is
evolving. It’s, like, so totally cool.
The list is endless. A flat is now
an apartment. A lift is an elevator. Women carry purses, not handbags. A
television advert has been replaced by a commercial. And the word guys is commonly used to refer to a
group of people, regardless of gender (I think we can blame the highly popular
TV show Friends for that one). English
people, like their American cousins, are, like, constantly using the word like inappropriately, to the extent that
it will eventually be, like, proper.
And it’s not just across the Atlantic Ocean that language is evolving. I moved to Texas from Minnesota
thirty years ago. When I first arrived in The Lone Star State, I was charmed by
the Texas accent and unique language. Texans were often fixin’ to do something,
and y’all was the preferred
second-person pronoun. Sadly, with so many Yankees moving to our state, the
Texas idioms and unique way of speaking are growing rare. The exception is y’all (that’s staying right here, thank
you, ma’am).
When Patty and I first started
writing together, she would sometimes graciously point out a specific word I
had used, questioning if it was British. And she was always right. But I think
she would agree that those British words creep into my narrative less and less.
It’s not so much that I have become Americanized; it’s that the English
language (as spoken in England) has done so.
Of course, we all know that
English has to evolve (as Patty, my
wordsmith, pointed out). If not, we would all be speaking like characters in a
Jane Austen novel, or even worse, a Shakespearean play. And that’s just, like, totally
okay! NOT!
