US vs. UK English

[The following piece started off as a YouTube comment to this video, but it got too long to leave on YouTube, where commenters generally have short attention spans, and reading at length is considered a species of work.]

Some of my UK friends and I are always kicking each other's ankles about language. I accuse them all the time of misnaming things. In the world of cooking (I cook a lot), Brits will say grill for what is obviously a broiler, and they'll say mince for ground meat (to mince is to chop finely, not grind). What we Yanks call bandages the Brits will call plasters, even though they have no plaster in them (unless we're talking about the old plaster casts for broken limbs). Then there's the UK pay rise, as if your salary simply rose on its own, as opposed to the more proper pay raise, indicating your pay was raised by someone superior to you. Beyond misnaming things, there are all the sickeningly cutesy terms to come out of British English: wobbly bonkers, collywobbles, timey-wimey, etc. My UK friends will, of course, fire back with all of the ridiculous Americanisms they know, and I expect some acid replies to this piece from Brits—and American anglophiles—defending Old Blighty's hono(u)r.

About those anglophiles: I work as a content creator and editor/proofreader in Seoul, so our department had to establish, as a matter of official style, what type of English we would default to in our textbooks. Our boss is a Korean-fluent American, so he of course said the style would be American English. We work, however, with plenty of British, Australian, Kiwi, etc. freelancers, so I often find myself "correcting" their English. Of course, the British English I'm correcting isn't wrong by any means, and if I'm honest, I have to acknowledge that we Yanks owe the English pretty much everything when it comes to language: there'd simply be no US English without British English. But because UK English is not our default style, I have to "correct" it whenever I see it. This doesn't bother me; it's unfair to expect a British writer to write in anything other than British English. What does bother me, though, are Americans who, out of sheer pretentiousness, affect a British air simply because they find it more... dignified or whatever. Remember who you are! Be loyal to your heritage! I have an American friend who insists on spelling certain words the British way: colour, metre, etc. His problem, though, is that he doesn't go all the way and write in completely British English! All or nothing, I say—none of this half-assing nonsense (half-arseing?). My point is that, if you're from the UK, then by all means speak and write the way God intended you to! Don't be a traitor to your own kind! And the same goes for my American brethren.

Another peeve is Americans who write or even say "er" when they mean "uh," i.e., the sound you make as a filler when you pause. In American English, we tend to pronounce the "r" rhotically, which is one of the reasons why Europeans laugh at our nasal, Fran Drescher-ish delivery. So "er," which in British English properly sounds like "uh" to the American ear, is mispronounced "urrrr" when Yanks use it. Meanwhile, "uh" is simply the American spelling for the exact same sound as the British "er"! Anglophile Americans are pitiful. I bet most Brits think so, too. (The rhotic "r" does, however, appear in British English, usually as a way to separate two vowels. From "A Fish Called Wanda," we hear "Wander and I" from John Cleese instead of "Wanda and I," as a Yank would say it.

"Good on ya'!" is not an American expression, but many Americans have started using it instead of the perfectly serviceable "good fer you!" I trace the usage back to Bruce the Shark from the 2003 movie "Finding Nemo." There's the moment in the movie where Bruce booms out, "Good on ya', mate!"—and the rest was history: Bruce popularized the expression. I'm sure the actual history of the expression's entrance into American English is more complicated than that, but that's my "folk etymology," for better or for worse. My point in bringing this expression up is that it's another example of how Americans will adopt Britishisms (or is this more of an Aussie-ism?) without even realizing that the expressions aren't American. No regard for the integrity of one's own language. American anglophiles might be actively traitorous, but many Americans, through stupidity or ignorance, are passively traitorous.

As for the problem with saying pants in the UK, as mentioned in your video, I should note that the French call them un pantalon (singular), which I think sits at the root of the now-archaic pantaloon in English. Anyway, knowing the French origin justifies the American usage. Pants might mean "underpants/underwear" in the UK these days, but here in Korea, men's underpants (briefs) are called by the Konglish designation paenti, i.e., "panties." Demeaning if you're a guy. Or let me rephrase that: demeaning if you're a sexually insecure guy (I'm insecure enough to feel demeaned).

Linguistic ankle-kicking aside, it's thanks to my UK, Aussie, Kiwi, etc. friends that my awareness of the richness of English has increased. I remember being faced with a sentence from one of our freelance writers: a character in a reading-comprehension story said of his old computer, "I'm taking this to the tip." American as I am, I had no clue what he meant by that. Was he taking the computer to the extreme? So I had to look up words from the story like "tip" and "skip" to find out he was taking the computer to a dump (a tip), and he was going to throw it into a dumpster (a skip). What do the Brits think every time we Yanks say dumpster fire? Do they say skipfire as the equivalent?

In fairness, being a prescriptivist purist about language is a lost cause: language is always changing and cross-pollinating. But my linguistic insight is that most of this linguistic evolution occurs because people are sloppy, making mistakes and not being conscious of what counts as US English and what counts as UK English. I try to remain conscious of differences. This is why you'll never see me write that I have to prepone a meeting (Indian English), or that someone is a fair dinkum bloke (Aussie English).