Donald Clarke: Accept no substitute for Irish English

Language is endlessly mutable. A few thousand years ago we'd all have been using a version of Irish unrecognisable to the one spoken today. Anglo-Saxon sounded as much like English as English sounds like a tractor reversing over a goose. Those people who moan about shifts in syntax may as well argue for the return of the crusades. "Sir, imagine my surprise when I read that Francis Murderer was 'hung' in 1932. Would you tell me where he is on display?" That's what those people write to the newspaper. Idiots! These battles are not worth fighting. As long as the meaning is clear why should we worry about linguistic spasms?

A newsreader has just pronounced the first syllable of “privacy” to rhyme with “hive” rather than “give”. Do I care? Not in the slightest. I skip gaily from the house, untroubled by a harmless Americanism that does nothing to muddy the relevant sentence. Yeah, I’m good. I whistle as I put out the garbage before settling down for a cookie. There is, indeed, a rough energy to the Americanisms that . . .

I can't keep this up. The unstoppable rise of the US “privacy” is an abomination that must be resisted will the greatest gusto. Those sorts who nod patiently at everyday mutations in English become, in this context, collaborators with a stealthy, merciless invasion force.

Laugh all you want. Today they come for the correctly used first vowel sound in the word mentioned above. Tomorrow they make drills into jackhammers. Before you know it ladybugs will be pester you as you try to eat your popsicle. Do the math.

The fact that a host of former Americanisms are now deemed respectable makes this situation no less horrible. It is true that such words as deadline, teenager and hijack were once used only in the United States, but those coinages filled holes in our dictionaries.

There was, at the point of their migration, no satisfactory substitute in our own version of English.

Anyway, the awareness that earlier generations allowed these viruses to infect the linguistic metabolism should not deter us from exercising greater degrees of vigilance. When scientists figured out that cholera came from dirty water they made sure that standards of sanitation were increased. Let that be a model for our own attitude to “privacy”, “vitamin” and “lever”.

There is something a tad pretentious about slipping bits of French or German into everyday speech. Most folk experience some guilty Schadenfreude when a friend misuses a term such as "succès d'estime". We do not, however, have any fear that our children are turning French. German cultural imperialism wasn't even much of a problem when German military imperialism was in its pomp.

The fear of an American language is, moreover, different in quality to concerns about domestic colloquialisms gaining respectability. For at least 100 years the United States has, mostly (but not entirely) inadvertently, been carrying out a cultural takeover of the globe. Much of the pillaging has been welcome, but that does not make the advance any less rapacious. Obviously, when perusing archive footage, we laugh at the religious nuts who felt that the Hollywood "fillums" and the sexy rock ’n’ roll music were going to lead our children away from country dancing and tying knots with groping scoutmasters. We all profited from the arrival of such entertainments. However, the red-faced, tweedy reactionaries were on to something. A sort of homogenisation is afoot. We're all starting to sip from the same melting pot.

If you want practical illustration of how worried many are about the infestation of linguistic Americana look to the paranoia that now attends the word “soccer”. This is less of an issue in Ireland, where the term has long been brandished to distinguish Gaelic Football from the Association version.

In the United Kingdom, however, use of the word “soccer” causes frothing at the mouth and reddening of the ears. British fans positively seethe with anticipation of the S-word when Americans begin to discuss the sport. A US invasion of the Isle of Man would cause less fury than national adoption of those degraded two syllables.

The odd thing is that, until relatively recently, "soccer" (which derives from "association") was in common use throughout the United Kingdom. Watch episodes of Match of the Day from the 1970s and you will see Jimmy Hill fling the word around with abandon. It was not until the late 1980s – when Americans began to move in on the World Cup – that it gained its current demonic quality.

None of which is to suggest that sports enthusiasts should lay back on their resistance to “soccer”. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Just listen to those newsreaders desecrating “privacy”. This will not stand.