The Economist Europe – July 22-28, 2017

68 Books and arts The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017

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AUL REVERE’S ride through Concord,

Massachusetts, warning that “the Brit-

ish are coming! The British are coming!”,

is said to have saved America’s revolution

from an early defeat that could have

proved fatal. Much of the story, sadly for

his legend, is myth. But now many Britons

suspect that British English is losing a war

to the American kind. As with Revere’s

ride, it can be hard to winkle out the truth.

In 2011 the BBC published a broadside

by Matthew Engel, citing five common

Americanisms, and inviting readers to

send in their own least-favourite ones.

They did so with gusto, adding that these

Yankeeisms made them “thoroughly dis-

gusted” and the like. Mr Engel had hit a

nerve, and last month he published

“That’s the Way it Crumbles”, a book be-

moaning the Americanisation of British

English. He is at pains to say that he is not

anti-American. He merely wants to pro-

tect his country’s distinctive dialect.

But in that article from 2011, four of five

of Mr Engel’s “Americanisms” were, in

fact, of British origin. So were many of the

ones readers sent in. “Gotten”, one wrote,

“makes me shudder.” Yet it is the original

English participle, replaced laterin Britain

by “got”. “Fall” for autumn and “mad” for

angry, too, were born in England, before

fading there in the early modern era. Mr

Engel is more careful in the new book to

point out such round-trippers.

It is true that America is influencing

British usage. “Smart” is increasingly de-

scribing the intelligent as much as the

well dressed. (Never mind that “smart”

first was used this way in Britain in 1571.)

Many Britons prefer “movies” to “films”.

And “fries” and “cookies” are now ap-

pearing alongside “chips” and “biscuits”.

But are they always replacing them?

No: “smart” is savvy, whereas “clever”

is swotty. “Fries” are thin and crispy, and

“cookies” are American styles like choco-

late-chip, notes Lynne Murphy, an Ameri-

can linguist at Sussex University writing

her own book about the relationship be-

tween British and American English.

“Movies” tend to come from Hollywood;

“film” is still preferred for the latest gritty

cinema from Europe. In other words, these

Americanisms are not an impoverishment

of British English. They are additions to it.

The traffic goes both ways: “scones”,

both the things and the word, have made

their way to America (though not the pro-

nunciation: most Americans make it

rhyme with “cones”). Ben Yagoda, an

American academic, keeps a website of

“Not One-Off Britishisms” used by stylish

Yanks, from “ginger” hair to “nick” for

“steal”. Mr Engel replies that these are lim-

ited to intellectuals in America. American-

isms, he says, are taking deeper root among

ordinary Britons.

English has always sucked up words

from around the globe. Mr Engel’s fear is

that in the past half-century, one source

has come to dominate: America, thanks

to its cultural, technological and political

heft. But he goes even further in saying

that, in a century, it ispossible to imagine

“American English absorb[ing] the British

version completely”.

This is—to use another Americanism—

horsefeathers. American and British Eng-

lish differ on many levels: spelling, pro-

nunciation, vocabulary, style and gram-

mar. Mr Engel focuses on showing that

some British words are giving way to, or

making room for, American alternatives.

But these are a fraction of the huge vocab-

ulary otherwise shared by the two dia-

lects. It is easy to find a newspaper article

in which not a single word (spelling aside)

is distinctly British or American. In other

domains (recipes and car-parts, for exam-

ple) differences are frequent. But these do-

mains are local and personal, and highly

resistant to change.

Overall, British English is in rude

health. Pronunciation differences affect

virtually every word, and British pronun-

ciation is hardly converging on American.

The few grammatical differences (for ex-

ample “I will” in America, versus “I will

do” in Britain) show little sign of changing

either. There is little appetite in Britain for

American spelling. And that ineffable

quality of style makes articles by British

or American writers distinct, even in the

absence of obvious shibboleths.

American influence on global (not just

British) English is rising. But varieties from

Ireland to India to Australia retain a clear

identity. Even within America, local dia-

lects, especially the southern one, are go-

ing strong. All of these, and British English

too, are constantly innovating. Mr Engel is

right to dread a “linguistic monoculture”.

He is wrong to think that it is likely.

Johnson The Americanisms are coming!

But British English is being influenced, not destroyed, by the American sort

through the less elegant expedient of jerry-

rigged motors. These early works are

clunky, quirky, infused with a Dadaist ir-

reverence and sense of play. “Two Spheres”

consists of white balls against a black pan-

el, one slowly turning while the other

moves up and down. Both the forms and

the motions are simple to the point of ba-

nality. But there is a revolution and a reve-

lation lurking in these childlike ele-

ments—a demonstration that the

immaterial stuff of time can be evoked

through the most material of forms.

Calder’s work is a crucial link between

high-modernist abstraction and today’s

performance and video art. Even at their

most static, his works are theatrical, trans-

forming the act of seeing into an open-end-

ed choreographed experience. The Whit-

ney show stresses this aspect not only by

deploying an “activator” in the gallery to

give his mobiles an occasional gentle

nudge—but also by inviting contemporary

musicians, dancers and other performers

to stage works inspired by the sculptures.

Calder’s fascination with alternative

experiences included the element of

sound, as seen in “Red Disc and Gong”, a

mobile in which shifting air currents cause

a mallet to strike a gong at unpredictable

intervals, creating a minimalistmusic that

anticipates the chance-driven composi-

tions of John Cage. Through this most eco-

nomical of means, Calder vastly expands

the expressive reach of the medium.

Over the decades, Calder’s reputation

has suffered from over-familiarity. His

works can feel too ingratiating, too crowd-

pleasing, too user-friendly—the ubiquitous

décor of the corporate lobby and the

child’s nursery. “Calder: Hypermobility”

reveals an artist no less delightful than the

one of the popular imagination, but also a

pioneering sculptor who engineered a pro-

found shift in this ancient practice. 7