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Comment by olingern | Hacker News Reader

No doubt we "Americans" have changed the language, for better or worse, but this comment is more about journalism.

I expect more from the BBC than to let a former Bloomberg journalist make generalizations without anything to back it up. "Awesome" occurring more often than "marvelous" doesn't provide us with anything other than the fact that the author appreciates the latter more than the former.

Seems appropriate that I should go write a piece for the BBC on how journalism has declined and how Brits are contributing, and be sure to cite this article.

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Perhaps it's not obvious to non native British English speakers but the American use of "awesome" to mean something rather different to its traditional British English meaning is very clear and obvious example of 'undesirable' Americanisation of English. Any native speaker of British English would recognize the phenomenon from their own experience but the author provided some actual numbers to back up the reality of this particular linguistic evolution.

It's a change I've personally lamented due to the loss of the word awesome to use for its original meaning without a good replacement.

I think what he fails to understand, and many British for that matter, is that the language is not "owned" by anyone. Australians have probably augmented English more than us Americans, but I don't hear or see much complaining about their use of the language. The article comes off as whiny and unsubstantiated.

It's a tough time to be an American, and most people realize that. Exploiting that with bad journalism is just throwing gas onto a trash fire IMO.

edit: More importantly, if Brits want to preserve the language as they see it in their country, they should consider going the French route [1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

I think you're projecting your own concerns onto the author. Certainly language is not owned by anyone (which is why the French approach is stupid) and languages always evolve (as the author acknowledges early in the article). The article is not trying to change American English, it's aimed at a British audience and drawing attention to something that the author fears the British are losing by adopting American English without thinking about the consequences.

I grew up in England but live in Canada and speak quite Americanized English as a result. I've got nothing against Americans or them speaking American English and I don't think the author has either. I do agree with him however that as Brits (and as Canadians in my case) we are losing something valuable by adopting American English unthinkingly and it's worth paying a bit more attention to individually when we use language as a result.

> I think you're projecting your own concerns onto the author

It's entirely possible.

> which is why the French approach is stupid

I think there's some merit to what they do, but it is a bit much.

> I do agree with him however that as Brits (and as Canadians in my case) we are losing something valuable by adopting American English unthinkingly and it's worth paying a bit more attention to individually when we use language as a result.

I would agree, but would say the author / BBC could have had more tact and not used the headline, "How Americanisms Are Killing the English Language." If a Japanese news outlet ran an article, "How the British have 'watered' tea down for more than 100 years" -- not too many Brits would be excited about reading it.

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