Do they? No doubt some linguistic fashions
cross the ocean, but they don't amount to much -- say, things like final stress
in "harass" or an occasional "I don't have" for "I haven't got"; the
usual trickle of cultural loans like trendy words or phrases (but
generational slang is definitely different nevertheless). I don't think
there are any systematic modifications of British English that could be
attributed to American influence. Back to rhoticity? No way. "Clay ass" for
"clahss"? Apage, Satanas. Of course RP is evolving and absorbing dialectal
influences, but the latter come mostly from the North or from the
popular speech of London, rather than the USA.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 5:40 AM
Subject: [tied] English.
I marvel even more at how you have to travel to Great Britain
or Ireland to find something that gets difficult to understand dialect-wise (but
just about everyone whose native dialect gives a problem can code-switch to
something resembling MidAtlantic). Yeah; the Brits are listening to us USians,
and modifying their speech accordingly.