I still remember my third standard teacher chiding for misspelling the word “colour” as “color” and now after four decades my software says that colour is wrong spelling. India was one country which was faithful to British in many ways even after independence and among many one main affinity is (was??) we speak read and write British English. We remember the most difficult words with all the silent letters like Psychophancy effortlessly but will be corrected by my software.

Invasion of American English has been a recent event may be about five to six years that’s all but the effect appears to be enormous. It shows that our National Newspapers which were once upon a time clinging on to “correct Queen’s English” has now appointed an American for a fabulous pay package (again American term) just to “change” the entire paper to “American English” and now people in the wrong side of 30s who had with great difficulty picked up the difficult spellings are now making miserable efforts to learn the new simple spelling and crying to hell with it.. and to hell with what?

Beggars cannot be choosers and we are indirectly serving Americans and have to speak only American English. That’s why my third standard teacher’s diligent work to correct my spelling has lost its sense now and my 80 year old father who used to be “proud for speaking perfect British English” with the prefect accent on the right syllables fails to understand many phrases that assault him from everywhere. He asked me a pointed question what is this outsourcing – the very term is wrong because it should be Outsource and I blink because I am myself comfortable with outsourcing and again he asked why are these youngsters saying “anyways” when anyway is correct and also toward instead of “towards” and I should say that this is American English. He went on to trace Norman influence on English language and I was tired listening to it because I had myself been teaching this to my Literature Students.

And too many American phrases also confound him and one is “twenty four seven” and when one service engineer told me that “we offer twenty four seven service Ma’m” and I said O.K. my amused dad asked what is this “twenty four seven” and I told him it is nothing but round the clock service on all days without break even on Sundays. Today’s children prefer to speak shortly that is even a small word like mobile become “mobs” for them and I gathered the meaning with reference to the context. FYK (for your knowledge) and ASP (for as soon as possible) are words usually used in their conversation and it is really entertaining when you eavesdrop into today’s generation’s language because it is funny in many ways. “Yupe” for yes and “nope” for no and “single point of contact” and “one stop shop” and “MTI” for Mother Tongue influence in your English. We simply say “MTI is very high” and people like my father are bamboozled and it is just “guys” in general for boys and girls and there is no actress as even female artists are referred to as actors and the word chairperson is completely forgotten it is Chairman even the person is a lady. The figure thousand has disappeared in today’s English and for them it is 20 K and forty grand K and should speak rapidly and end with a shrug like an American and say “and that’s about it and nothing more” which would definitely make the eight decade old man stunned.

Actually the word “Call Center” (not centre as we were taught) is a bit obnoxious to hear by people like us. It was Americans who brought in the word “call girl” for prostitutes and now we casually say “its on call” when we phone a person to seek service for our computer or other gadgets. And several words are added to the dictionary like “gizmos” and “gadgets” and we talk about “personal space” the list is endless. Indians are very faithful because we are serving American community we will speak American English.

http://americatestprep.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/10/british-or-american-english-which-is-correct.htm