Americanisation survey: the results

By G.L. | NEW YORK

OUR online survey asking Brits which Americanisms they use has had over 650 responses, on top of the 130+ comments on the post itself. Clearly it struck a nerve. Owing to some kind of Google glitch I can't currently get at the data recording how long each respondent has been in the United States, but the percentage responses for each question are in the charts below. (Not all the percentages add up to 100% because some people skipped some questions.) It seems that "sidewalk" and "apartment" are the two commonest adoptions, while about half of you use "vacation" and "bug". There's a bit more resistance to "I'm good" over "I'm well", and to saying Z as "zee" instead of "zed". Around two-thirds stick with the British pronunciations of "process" and "progress", which seems to confirm my suspicion that those two are real assimilation watersheds. Interestingly, over 40% are, like me, stuck somewhere between the American and British pronunciations of "beta".

In addition, your comments provided a wealth of other markers of Americanisation. ALUMinum/aluMINium, rowter/rooter (for router), bathroom/toilet, math/maths, produce/"fresh fruit and vegetables", parking lot/car park, elevator/lift, garbage/rubbish, stop light/traffic light, gas/petrol, 'erb/herb, v-eye-tamin/vitt-amin, bu-i/boy (for buoy), faucet/tap, and the ever-loved tomayto/tomahto, plus countless others. To say nothing of the possibilities for misunderstanding when a Brit asks an American for a rubber, urges him to keep his pecker up, or asks his name and is told "I'm Randy".