vbthedog

I have noticed something of late and I am curious.

As journalists/writers/commentators, I consider we are at the frontline of those of us considering ourselves wordsmiths. To a large degree, therefore, I believe, this makes us sort of custodians of the English language – as per the Oxford Dictionary and the Macquarie equivalent. I do accept that we are also, at times, the harbinger of change as well as the reporters of it. Watergate is the best example I can think of and since that particularly nasty little situation, every journalist at some time or another has probably labelled something “blah-gate”.

Sad but true.

But what concerns me is the influence into the lexicon of American-isms. Just lately I have seen references in journo’s writings to ‘humor’ as against ‘humour’, ‘favorite’ versus ‘favourite’. And even ‘tire’ instead of ‘’tyre’.

(Interestingly, I had an email from a US journo the other night that used the word ‘favor’ in it, and he had actually placed ‘favour’ in parentheses directly after this as if I needed a translation!)

Has this phenomenon been caused by a need to shorten words due to SMS or Twitter? Do journalists have their word processor dictionaries set to ‘US English’ instead of ‘Australian English’ or ‘UK English’? If so why? Or has it been decided that the ‘American way’ is the way forward? I would hate to lose Australian journalistic identity based on what amounts to US TV and movie influence.

Many examples abound with liberal sprinklings of ‘cookie’, ‘trunk’, ‘hood’, ‘gas’, ‘sidewalk’ and ‘crosswalk’ immediately springing to mind.

What I find interesting is that we are fast (seemingly) to let Americanisms infiltrate our language/linguistics/lexicon as are many other countries, but the US population doesn’t reciprocate to my knowledge. I have been to the US a number of times and while I have been pressed to say ‘G’day’ to hoots of laughter or ‘You call that a knife?’ for instant amusement, (making me feel like some parrot on display in a zoo), I don’t think I have ever heard a US person say ‘bonzer’, ‘ripper’, ‘bewdy’, ‘sanger’, ‘boozer’, ‘bloke’ or even ‘mate’ as part of normal language – other than to attempt to be “in” at the time.

I wonder why?

I remember many years ago watching an episode of Disney on TV (it was always on a Sunday at 6:30pm) that was from one of the “worlds” and it entailed the story of Tom Sawyer (or it may have been Huckleberry Finn, this was 45 years ago or so). In the dialogue (there’s two more, ‘dialog and analog’), Tom, or it may be Huck, say to an unknown person, “Do you speak American?” My Dad almost went apoplectic.

He wasn’t anti-American – well no more than WW II may have affected UK soldiers in certain areas. He in fact loved things such as Westside Story, South Pacific, the Boston Pops and more, but like me, felt that self-identity was important and shouldn’t be usurped.

So I ask? Are we over influenced and are heading down this path?

I did hear a kiddliewink (about 8 yo) the other day in a broad what would be called ‘Westies accent’ in Sydney, refer to ‘his Mom’ to a friend. I have yet to hear a ‘Pop’ thankfully, other than referencing a grandfather.

How individuals discuss, enunciate, talk or argue is their business of course. But should we as journalists/writers/commentators push any influence on to our readers? Or are we just being lazy, accepting what our WP spellchecker is saying or falling into the SMS/TXTing trap to minimise the number of characters we use?

Or is it simply progress? I’d value and love your opinion on this.