Americanisms have widely been adopted outside the US, in other English-speaking countries and those with other languages. Photo: Public Domain/ J M Flagg
A zee instead of an S, napkins instead of serviettes, trunks, bangs, take-out, and a total disregard for the letter U. Americanisms make some people outside of the USA recoil in horror.
Nights and socio-linguist Dr Julia de Bres have opened up a can of worms to discuss dreaded and despised Americanisms.
"The differences between the varieties number in the thousands ... even though the similarities outweigh the differences," de Bres said. But it's a topic that can raise heckles and highlight division.
Americanisms are word expressions or other language features characteristic of American English, she said.
"It's something [that] refers to the fact that America has developed its own specific variety of English - actually a long time ago, because when the settlers first colonised America, they arrived from England, and they were all speaking British English.
"But as happens with language, their language use evolved over time, and by the time we got to the 19th century, American English was quite distinct from British English, to the point that it can be seen as a different language variety."
De Bres enjoys the different ways language are used: "I'm actually fine with them - I think it's kind of part of my job is to celebrate variation ... they're not wrong, they're just different."
"Maybe 'off of' triggers me a little bit. But in general I think that variety is good, and what really interests me is why people care - it's the fact people have such strong feelings."
Those different opinions can illuminate deeper feelings, she said.
The ubiquity of American media has influenced the spread of Americanisms. Photo: ITV / Weta
"The key thing that socio-linguists will always say, is that a language attitude is not really about language per se. Language attitudes are social - so to understand why people have the feelings that they have, we need to look at the cultural and historical context of why we might feel that way about Americanisms, and America more generally.
"Historically, it's not a new thing for British people to have an issue with Americanisms, In fact as soon as America started to diverge, British people were very bothered by that."
"... it challenged the idea that English belonged to England, and British people were in charge of it, so there's this political element, and it goes way back."
Now Americanisms are also associated with the concept of America as a cultural and economic powerhouse, and "ideas of cultural imperialism and how it's taking over the world".
In the US 'The Democrat Party' instead of 'The Democratic Party', is new language usage linguists have associated with Donald Trump, and he famously coined - probably in error - the word covfefe. Photo: ALON SKUY / AFP
US vs British spelling: An attempt at reform based on idealism
De Bres says the main differences in American spelling from British arose from an attempt to make things better.
Noah Webster (1758 - 1843), the American linguist of Webster's Dictionary fame, decided the founding of the new country was the perfect opportunity to have a punt at standardising and simplifying some of the notorious idiosyncrasies that had evolved in British English spelling, she said.
"But also apparently he also had a political goal, which was to distinguish this new society they were trying to create in America ... and create a new culturally and linguistically distinct society. And that was part of the reason for making the dictionary, and that's where all those spellings came from."
Common differences include: taking out the U in '-our' segments within words, eg neighbor; reversing the word ending '-re', to '-er', eg meter; or frequently exchanging a Z for an S.
"Most of us can usually tell pretty quickly, when we're reading a text, which variety of English it's in - and people have quite strong preferences," de Bres says.
"But historically and to the present day New Zealand English is closer to British English, so I guess that is partly why we do tend to defer to British English - most New Zealanders."
Pavement, blinkers and tarmac are examples of common Americanisms. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Word divisions
Vocabulary is the most obvious difference between British and American English. Restroom, faucet, normalcy, tins, cookie and eggplant are some words Americans use that aren't typical in British English.
"In all these cases, they're certainly ones where we'd certainly understand what was meant, but we might not use it ourself," de Bres said.
"Or we might. Because something that's interesting about New Zealand English is that we do actually use a mix of Americanisms and British-isms - if you want to call it that. ... You're familiar with both of them."
De Bres finds herself using the verb 'dove', as in: 'he dove into the pool'. Rather than the British: 'he dived into the pool'.
"In the case of adjectives ... for a comparative adjective: 'different than' in the United States, whereas British English is 'different from' or 'different to': "I think I might use all of those, depending on the sentence," she said.
Sometimes the same words can have slightly different meanings. The word homely, in British English has positive connotations like cosy, but in American English might mean ugly.
The same word can have additional meanings in American English. For example 'school', in British English it is reserved for places where only children are educated, but in the US it also refers to tertiary educational institutes.
Sometimes the same word can also have different connotations, for example 'quite' as in 'quite good' - in British English might mean it's not that good ... but in US English would mean it's very good.
