Her book delves past simply clarifying what Americans call a courgette to explain why the two Englishes aren’t more different, how prudishness changes our experiences at the doctor’s office, and what makes grammar classes a political issue in one country but not the other. (It was, however, a British television writer who invented “ omnishambles”). “There is a tendency in Britain to see linguistic things you don’t like as American,” Murphy told the Guardian.īut Murphy, an American who moved to the UK in 2000, demonstrates repeatedly in her book that both countries’ citizens aren’t very good at knowing which words began in which country.įor instance, while “shambles” may have been a British invention, Murphy says it was Americans who first used it to mean “a scene of disorder or devastation”.
Or consider her new book, The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English, which assaults the British obsession of attacking US English with cold, hard facts. T o those dedicated warriors hunched over their keyboards or gripping their pens, ready to fire off an angry salvo about the Americanization of British English to their favorite newspaper, television channel or book publisher, linguist Lynne Murphy has a solemn warning: check a good dictionary first.
