When I eventually get around to it in my History of the English language series, I will look at modern resistance to so-called “Americanisms” on this side of the pond. For the meantime though, The Guardian has an interesting piece on Americanisms and which words and terms are, in fact, not Americanisms.

By the looks of this article, many words that have been tagged with “Americanism” are simply being reimported into British English following a linguistic schism.

I knew of the word “gotten”, though I think the modern usage of the term is specifically American (it seems to have a fuzzy meaning of being neither a present nor a past tense version of “got”) I know it exists in the work of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan writers… a period when the modern English language was invented and began to take the form it has today.

Just out of curiosity, I would like some feedback from my American readers on the following: Is there a movement or a general grumbling of “Britishisms” in wider society or more specifically, in the educational system? Or is adoption of British words into American English not seen as a problem? Or perhaps that as the language started here, is it something that is just accepted?

I’m very curious to know!