Free Republic

When it comes to fighting off the invasion of English words, the French Resistance has had mixed fortunes over the years. Nevertheless, the fight goes on. With the help of the Ministry of Culture, here’s a list of the latest English terms that French authorities want deported. …

It's started. Rising inflection at the end of the sentence. Sometimes several times in a sentence. Very. Short. Staccato. Statements. As yet no use of "like" four or five times in a sentence, but occasionally once or twice. Meike, once the vocalisation of Laura Ashley prints and the only girl at her inner-London primary school who never dropped any consonant, let alone an aitch, is starting to speak with an American accent. Perhaps not quite an accent, yet, but the rhythm of her speech has changed in a decidedly US direction. The rest can't be far behind. We have been...

In 1956 – half a century ago this year – Sir Winston Churchill published the first volume of his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. He had won the Nobel Prize for Literature three years earlier, and this new four-volume work rightly won massive critical acclaim. A J P Taylor considered that "it is one of the wisest, most exciting works of history ever written".It was during his Wilderness Years of the 1930s that Churchill had conceived the idea of a book that would, in his words, "lay stress upon the common heritage of the peoples of Great Britain and...