[Stuart]

Originally Posted by sherer

I've been reading on the BBC website usually the home of the establishment and Englishness about the first cash point machine. Even on there, talking about a British invention, they use the phrase ATM. Now i'm not sure what these machines are going to tell me, nor how they will do it automatically.

They are called Automatic Teller Machines because they are Automatic, and the clerks in the bank who would normally give you your money are called Tellers.

Every film post we get now also has the date written in US format, where as a few years ago they would convert it to the UK format e.g In cinemas 26th July rather than now we get In cinemas July 26th in their format even though they already have to change the post to put our format up.

More and more I come across more Americanisms but when they start being displayed in adverts and info clips from our own government surely things have gone too far

Now, that is just plain laziness.

James Bond now carries a "cell phone" whatever they are.

Now, this is one area in our language where the Yanks actually have it correct, and we don't, generally. The phones are actually called Cellular Telephones (hence O2s original name, Cellnet).

---------- Post added at 15:17 ---------- Previous post was at 15:14 ----------

Originally Posted by sherer

I was reading an article in one paper about the Airbus which is being built in collaborating between the UK, France and Germany, but in this article ALL the entries for money were in US dollars even though it was an English newspaper. The US wouldn't have put up with an article being in pounds but I have to put up with dollars in my English paper

That's probably because most international companies work in one currency, then convert to local currencies when needed which makes things easier from a management point of view because it lowers the chance of errors due to fluctuations in currency markets. For instance, I used to do export documentation for Pfizer (the makers of Viagra, amongst other things), and, in Europe and the UK, they worked exclusively in Euros, but converted to other local currencies at the point of sale.