Beyond any naval or military conquest or any adventure in the nature of trade, probably the greatest enduring, human impact in the world is the spread of the English language, providing a ready lingua franca, especially between speakers of different minority languages and it has been moulded and has evolved with differences from the original in all the countries around the world where it has been adopted as the main or the official language. All of this is to be welcomed. But I do not understand why it is that a British journalist, writing in a British Sunday paper today needs to refer to a 'hardware store' when he was brought up to say 'ironmongers'. Next we will be putting our trash cans out for the garbage men on the sidewalks or visiting the snuff store instead of the snuff chandlers and the nation's school masters will be putting on their sport coats to teach math.
Please! Let us keep our own version of the original language alive and well and let it not be overwhelmed by the slight variation current in America (or anywhere else, for all that). God bless Uncle Sam! but it was he who wanted independence and he got it. British independence and identity are important too. In this age of increasing commercial 'globalization' and movement of people, they must be jealously guarded.