Matthew Engel is British-born [Northampton] not American.

He accepted that language changes. He said some Americanisms are an improvement. He said he no doubt committed some of the errors whereof he spoke.

two baasic points he made were that Britain was losing its own sense of self and

"But what I hate is the sloppy loss of our own distinctive phraseology through sheer idleness, lack of self-awareness and our attitude of cultural cringe. We encourage the diversity offered by Welsh and Gaelic - even Cornish is making a comeback. But we are letting British English wither."

He said indications of the 'threat' were british children thinking that you should say 'X,Y and Zee', 'take a raincheck', 'three strikes and you're out' and 'you got mail'; trucks rather than lorries, that in an emergency, you ring 911 instead of 999.

He especially fingered the American-driven internet which keeps correcting English spelling to American; Disney; and telly.


I had an experience like that the other day.

In a charity shop, they has the familiar "CD's 50 p"-type notice. I pointed out that the apostrophe was redundant, CDs being a simple plural like books. The lady told me if you type CDs and suchlike into the computer, it "corrects" it to CD's.

That's a threat to more than the language.




Following WillFly's logic, nobody can be corrected because we're all entitled to be prejudiced.