I read this in early July 2020.

The differences between British English and American English often worry Japanese learners of English. Although they are relatively small in the wider scheme of things, they also worry the inhabitants of Britain and the U.S., particularly the former.

The author of ‘The Prodigal Tongue’, Lynne Murphy, an American living in Britain and teaching at the University of Sussex, looks at perception, particularly from the British side, and often unjustified. She manages to both consider these points academically and humourously.

Her main aim is to overturn the idea that American English has deviated from the standard of British English. As she writes, “in fact, British English just keeps deviating from itself." (p.116)

She reinforces her argument both seriously and less seriously, with this joke being an example of the latter:
“An impatient American approaches a London hotel reception desk demanding to know where the elevator is. The receptionist replies “I think you mean the lift, which is just to your right there”.The American doesn’t take well to being corrected. “I’m from Chicago and we invented the damn things. They’re elevators.” The receptionist replies, “Yes, of course sir, but we invented the language.” (p.125)

She also gives specific examples, for example, ‘verbed nouns’ (nouns which are developed into verbs), seen by some critics as an example of the ‘Americanization’ of English. However, when she looks at two sections of the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’  (words beginning with ‘ca-‘ and ‘mo-‘, she found 464 verbs, 220 of which had first been nouns. Of the latter, more than a half came from before 1800, with the peak of this ‘verbing’ happening in the 16th and 17th centuries. There is also complexity. As she writes, “modern day ‘caterer’ is a noun from a verb (to cater) from a noun (cater) from a verb (to cate).  (p.181)

Find out more about the book.