American English…!

‘I’ll swing by your cube later’, ‘Let me run up and grab a sandwich since I am starving’, ‘Give me a holler when you’re done’, ‘Shoot me an email later’, ‘Let me throw this question in before I jump out of this meeting’, ‘You can kick this around for a while till you get an answer’ – These are some of the most common expressions prevalent in American corporate life. In the beginning they struck me as funny, dramatic and needlessly exaggerated. Then I learned that these usages convey the meaning to Americans instantly in a way that *normal* British English fails to do. My pet theory is that these expressions are derived heavily from cartoons and action heroes. It is funny, the way English evolves and evolves to suit the tastes of its various speakers. In one way, it is a credit to the language that each speaker adds his/her own flavour to the language. The body of English vocabulary draws heavily from other languages, that we already know. But it is to the credit of the English-speaking Americans themselves that this language has been reinvented in its own likeness…