America-no!

Hmm, America?

At the end of my last post, I mentioned the Americanisation of our spellings. This annoys me greatly, but worse - much, much worse - is the Americanisation of our words!

My 6 year old watches TV... a lot. Not so much during the day when I can limit him, but he wakes up very early, as far as I can see especially to watch the channels he wants to. Unfortunately, these are American channels - and American TV for kids is rubbish. There will be the odd cartoon that is very good, but the live action programmes seem to be written and produced in the coffee breaks of the adult programmes.

But worse - much, much worse - is the fact that my English child refers to elevators, stores, trucks etc. No!! Lifts, shops, vans and lorries!!

I admit, I've become a little obsessive about this, maybe in 50 years' time we'll all be using these words, but it jars, it sounds wrong. I've gone so far as to occasionally ban American programmes until he uses the correct words, but I have a feeling he's tutting at me behind my back, and probably doing it on purpose.

Maybe it's my lesson in parenting in general - I have to learn to chose my battles wisely.

(PS. Americanisation or -ization? I've got myself confused now!!!)