American and British English - it’s all rather fascinating

It's pretty clear gradable adverbs - words like rather, quite and really - are on the decline on both sides of the Atlantic together with fixed phrases - such as 'more or less', 'two or three' and 'for the most part'. The findings are revealed in 'American and British English: Divided by A Common Language', by Professor Paul Baker of Lancaster University, published by Cambridge University Press. The book uses a mixture of human analysis and computerised techniques to spot changes in British and American English from the 1930s to the present day, using large datasets of published writing from a wide range of sources. It considers spelling differences, words, grammatical classes (eg nouns, verbs and adjectives) and topics and concepts like 'war' and 'danger'. And it asks how language varieties are changing and if they becoming more similar to one another over time? Findings include: Easy-to-spot 'surface' features are holding up - things like the spelling of colour/color or the choice of whether to use pavement or sidewalk. Both sides of the Atlantic are tending to stick to national varieties - although American English has a slight edge overall. For more subtle, difficult-to-spot aspects of language, both languages have shown change since the 1930s - and in all cases it is American English which is at the forefront of the change.