Why we’re speaking British

Blame Harry Potter and Tina Brown, says Cordelia Hebblethwaite, for our infatuation with Britspeak.

SPOT ON—IT'S just ludicrous!” snaps Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley. “You are just impersonating an Englishman when you say spot on.” And don’t get him started on the phrase “chattering classes,” with its overtones of a distinctly British class system.

But not everyone shares his revulsion at the drip, drip, drip of Britishisms, to use an American term, crossing the Atlantic. “I enjoy seeing them,” says Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of the forthcoming book How to Not Write Bad. “It’s like a bird-watcher. If I find an American saying one, it makes my day!”

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