I hate to break the news to y'all, but your indignation and struggles against what you see as corruption or invasion of your native tongue will be of no avail. What's more, I might add, should be of no avail.

Look at the experience of France with its immemorial struggle to keep the Glorious French Language pure. For I think hundreds of years successive French governments and successive generations of French academicians have gazed down their noses (so essential in pronouncing French) at foreign usages creeping into their pure, holy language. They've ranted, and fulminated, and published, and organized scholarly bodies dedicated to keeping French absolutely static. But, to use that expression again, "to no avail".

To begin with, French is not and never was a pure and static thing. It is a mixture of degenerate Latin and various Germanic and Scandinavian languages, to mention a few. And that's even before one considers the leakage back into French from the various streams of English, which is another polyglot mishmash. These efforts at resistance call to mind the famous speech from Star Trek: "Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated."

The same things, in nearly the same words, may validly be said of English. There never was a "pure" English. Never was. And certainly never will be.

And it is an amusing fact that many objected-to "Americanisms" are survivals of usages which were originated on the east side of the big pond, and many of them before the settlement of the United States.

But complain on, if you like. And may you have joy of it. But you won't stop the inexorable homogenization of speech, especially in this day of easy, universal communication via web, radio, and TV.

One last personal comment: I tend to dislike the irritating currency of many English/UK/British usages and idioms in American speech, but because I know my indignation is of no avail I try to keep my mouth shut about my attitude. And as a result, there are only a few that still grate on my mind's ear, like "at the end of the day" and "back in the day".

Dave Oesterreich