Stan Shebs wrote:
Empirically, the people most likely to complain about dialect are lesser-educated Americans and over-educated Brits. Americans with more education will have consumed vast quantities of British dialect in the process of getting educated, and it will usually feel pretty natural to them, with the occasional curveball (I knew "milliard" before this discussion, but not "courgette"). Conversely, our Brits (and to some extent Commonwealthers in general) with PhDs will sooner or later get fed up with reading American English, and start making remarks about "illiterate Americanisms", while regular Brits seem generally indifferent to the issue.
I'll have you know I'm Australian without a Ph.D and complain just as much!
- d.