And Yes I'm Having A Coffee....

      Here's a very peculiar article from The Chronicle on the rise of Briticisms in American usage. The odd thing is that in reading it, I notice as a good little Canuck (okay, maybe not so "good" necessarily) how many of the phrases and clichés have been in relatively regular use for some time now. I had to think about it for a minute or so: these were terms that I knew in English contexts and in Canadian contexts, but only very rarely in American contexts. As such, I'm starting to wonder if the "Briticisms" of which the author Ben Yagoda-- yes, his name is a portmanteau of "Yoda" and "pagoda," or even "Abe Vigoda"-- writes are those per se, of if they're simply terms that have been filtering through to the US through Canada, through, I suspect, the proliferation of Canadian journalists and celebrities in American media. Watch your American news stations, for example, tonight and see how many of them are Canadian-trained or Canadian-period, Christiane Amanpour and Peter Jennings just being the most obvious. The only phrase mentioned in this article that remains, at least to my ears, specifically British is "ring-up," though I know I use it sometimes myself. "One-off" has been in Canadian English since -- oh, I don't even know how long anymore. It's also worth noting that some of this infiltration might have happened simply with the contact of Americans and Canadians in border-zones. Food for thought, though. If Mr Yagoda is going to figure this out, he has to realize that it may not strictly be a British influence, but quite possibly a Canadian one-- when all is said and done.

    Postscript: My father, when he heads out to Tim Horton's, announces to my mother that he's "Goin' fa coffee." It always sounds, however, like he's "gowen fuck offey." He never says "some coffee" or "a cup of coffee." And you don't get much less British than my Dad. Oh, Canada, always the bowdlerizing state....