American English and British English Project Summary

For our project, we wanted to study the difference between American English and British English. At first, we were interested in the random differences in spelling, however, our focus moved to Britishisms and their invasion into American culture. To study this, we chose popular British phrases and used Google Ngram to track their progression and use in American writing. We looked for patterns or news events that significantly increased their prominence in our culture. We also assessed different linguistic blogs and the opinions of both professional writers and the general public. We found that we were correct: the use of Britishisms is continually increasing in our country, with data to prove it. We assessed the terms ‘to go missing’, ‘ginger’, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On,’ and ‘Gobsmacked,’ We ran into trouble when we figured out that some of our phrases were only spoken or found in specific types of media (i.e. not in books). To remedy that, we used Google Trends, which tracks how often a word or phrase is searched. In all, it is impossible to deny the fact that Britishisms are steadily creeping into American English.

By Chelsea, Kayla & Diana