British teachers report they are hearing their pupils using more American words, intonation and slang.

LONDON − Órlaith Hallahan never sits on the couch. Never wears a sweater. Doesn't take out the trash. Why would she? She's English. Hallahan sits on the sofa. Wears a jumper. Takes out the rubbish.

"I don't normally use American words when I speak. I try to stick with the British English ones. But my friends do quite a lot," Hallahan, 10, said one school-day evening after a play date.

"'Play date' − I'm pretty sure that's an Americanism, too," her mother, Gráinne, chimed in.

The differences between American English and British and Irish English extend to spelling, pronunciation, idiom, even how dates, numbers and some punctuation are formatted. This gulf has long been a source of misunderstandings, superiority complexes − and humor. "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language," the Irish writer Oscar Wilde noted in 1887.

A little more than half a century later, Wilde's fellow Irishman George Bernard Shaw, a playwright and literary critic, was credited with a crack about how the United States and Britain were "two countries divided by a common language." Never mind that nobody seems to know where, in what context or indeed whether Shaw actually said it.

But it seems there's now a new, or at least revisited, chapter to the quarrelsome linguistic politics of "tomayto" versus "tomahto." Teachers across Britain say they are increasingly observing their young students use words like "candy" instead of "sweets," "diaper" not "nappy," "elevator" for "lift," "apartment" as opposed to "flat" and other words and phrases they associate with American English. They view this as part of a generalized transatlantic cultural creep facilitated by a daily, instant diet of TikTok, YouTube, Netflix and other border-busting digital services.

"You hear bits in their speech, you see bits in their writing, and actual American slang words, they use those all the time," said Shabnam Ahmed, head of the English department at a school in Bury St. Edmunds, a town near Cambridge. The pupils she teaches are ages 11 to 16.

"The other day one of my students called me 'Unc,' and I thought, 'What does that mean?'"

Her students helped her out.

"'Miss, it means you're old'," Ahmed said she was told. She's 34.

Ahmed said she's not always sure if the words she hears her pupils use originate in the United States or reach them through other avenues, such as Britain's rich multicultural urban areas, where new slang is often spread nationally through music and the internet and British English is often influenced by various Englishes; American, but also Jamaican Patois, African Englishes, South Asian languages and various forms of speech linked to the British working class.

But she said she's definitely noticing more of her students deploy distinctly American English words such as "gotten," the past participle of the verb "get." In British English, the participle is "got." I've got a new guitar. I've got a new job. In the U.S., it would be: I've gotten a new guitar. I've gotten a new job.

"My students say things like 'the Feds' all the time," Ahmed added. 'We don't even have the FBI here."

'Trash'-talking Brits

Available data appear to back up this pattern of a rise in American language imports.

According to survey data shared with USA TODAY by Teacher Tapp − which polls British educators on school-related issues to inform public policy − more than half of the 10,000 elementary school teachers surveyed said they had recently heard their pupils use words such as "trash" or "garbage" instead of the British term "rubbish."

Among British middle and high school kids, it was 33%. Teacher App found similar usage levels by British schoolchildren for a term like "candy" instead of "sweets." Teachers also reported hearing pupils use words like "fire truck," "booger," "sidewalk" and "move theater" − all considered American imports.

Teacher Tapp believes its survey is the first of its kind, meaning there is no statistical benchmark against which to assess its findings and determine whether they reflect a quantitative rise over time.

But teachers in Britain who have been doing the job for decades say there's no question the kids they teach are using American words more frequently.

Stephen Lockyer is a teacher at a primary school in Surrey, a relatively affluent county southwest of London. He has taught kids ages 5 to 11 for 20 years. He said that he now hears his students use words like "sweater" all the time and that this a sea change from years past.

Lockyer said he believes the shift can be attributed, at least in part, to British children consuming large amounts of U.S.-originated content on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms.

According to one industry study, 72% of British 2- to 12-year-olds watch YouTube; they spend an average of 83 minutes there each day. One of the most popular YouTubers in Britain is "MrBeast," an American named Jimmy Donaldson whose 452 million subscribers tune in to watch his high-budget stunts and philanthropic giveaways. Another is CoComelon, a 3D-animated nursery series that features the adventures of "baby JJ" and his family. It was created by Jay Jeon, another American.

Lockyer said it was "fairly normal" to hear kids at his school imitate American accents, especially when singing in the hallways, during special activities or at end-of-term celebrations. Though he conceded it would "be weird" if they were to sing "Empire State of Mind," the hit song by American rapper Jay-Z and singer/songwriter Alicia Keys, a perennial favorite, "in a posh British accent."

He added that it wasn't just American words and intonations infiltrating the minds of British schoolkids; it's also the politics. He said that in his experience, many British schoolchildren are familiar with President Donald Trump, yet they can't always name their own British prime minister.

"Trump's a brand," Lockyer said. "Kids understand brands."

Some British parents are even reporting that their children are speaking in American accents when they least expect it. "My 15y old said open the trunk and are we stopping for gas the other day on a drive!" one user of Mumsnet, a British social media platform that caters to parents, mainly women, noted in response to a reporter's question posted on the site. Strictly speaking, "boot," not "trunk," and "petrol," not "gas," would have been the expected British English words.

A British invasion − of words

Still, the language traffic is not all one way.

Ben Yagoda, an American author and retired professor of English, started writing a blog in 2011 that examined what he called "Not One-Off Britishisms," or NOOBS: examples of British words and usages that one way or another have seeped into American speech and writing in different ways.

Yagoda said that a "narrative of Americans polluting or poisoning the purity of the British English language" has been around for several hundred years but that plenty of British words and expressions have been exported to the United States as well, entering the American lexicon to various degrees.

"The word 'brunch' is one of them," he said. "That was slang in Oxford and Cambridge in the 1890s, and now it's much more popular in the U.S." His 2024 book "Gobsmacked!" looked at plenty more, including "one-off," "go missing," "curate," "early days," "easy peasy" and "full of beans."

What's more, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many children were stuck inside, some American parents reported their children were saying "mummy" instead of “mommy" and using phrases like "give it a go" because of a family of pigs and other animals with British accents who spend a lot of time playing games, visiting relatives and jumping in muddy puddles while snorting with laughter.

"Peppa Pig," the British animated children's TV series, was popular with preschoolers before the pandemic. As some U.S. states imposed lockdown restrictions, its popularity grew.

Some language experts are nevertheless skeptical about how meaningful, lasting and indeed surprising it is that two countries that share a language might influence each other.

"American words continue to come into British English, as they have been doing since the arrival of radio and cinema," said Peter Trudgill, a retired language professor from Britain. "It's a demographic thing, really − we hear more U.S. English than they hear British because there are more of them."

And M. Lynne Murphy, a U.S.-born linguistics professor at England's Sussex University, said teachers and parents reporting their children using more Americanisms is not the same things as children using more Americanisms.

"If a child on a British playground says 'candy,' people will notice it. If they say 'sweetie' a million times, nobody notices it," she said, emphasizing that there is often a bias around what we notice and draw conclusions around.

"Calling 'lifts' 'elevators' is not that common in Britain," she said. "It is one of those things that is common in news stories about the topic, just as it was in the news stories of the 1960s about the Americanization of British English."

Murphy also noted that vocabularies are highly portable.

"Words move," she said. "What's not moving so much is accents."

Hallahan, the 10-year-old, said she finds it "really annoying" when her friends say "couch" instead of "sofa." She said she doesn't really watch YouTube or follow American influencers.

She said that one time, after she had spent a lot of time her with friends, she "accidentally" uttered an American word in front of her "nan" − a common term for grandmother in Britain. She said her grandmother got angry at her about it. The word was "garbage."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Peppa Pig' made US kids posh. Now some hate UK kids sounding American

Reporting by Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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