The Token American

I stumbled upon BBC’s News Styleguide at work today. In this so-called "Styleguide", there’s a section for Americanisms which I found particularly enlightening. Here’s an excerpt:

“American speech patterns on the BBC drive some people to distraction. Adding unnecessary prepositions to verbs is guaranteed to cause apoplexy in some households. Problems which were once faced are now faced up to. In North America, people meet with other people. Everywhere else they meet them. British people keep a promise rather than deliver on it.”

I never knew American English can cause fits of anger and rage. But wait… it gets better:

“Many American words and expressions have impact and vigour, but use them with discrimination or your audience may become a tad irritated.”

Basically, the BBC is telling me that my English makes people irate and annoyed. No wonder why all the Aussies and Brits pick on me.

As a compromise, I will now put aside my beloved “David Hasselhoff saved my life” t-shirt and will replace it with a shirt that says either “Don’t talk to me. I’m American and my English will piss you off!” or "I speak American English so piss off!"

I can't really decide.