Who's afraid of the Americanization of English?

The evolution of the English language in books: Yankees one, Brits 0

Illustration by Mona Chalabi / Data: Gonçalves et al. 2017

There's a new book creating a stir in the United Kingdom, That's the Way It Crumbles: The American Conquest of English. As the vote for Brexit suggests, there's a nationalist trend in that country — and an argument that British and American English are two separate languages that ought to stay that way. Rebecca Ridealdisagrees, based on her studies as a historian of 17th Century England, when English settlers started coming here to the New World.