Hasbeen,
I ignore anything written in text as not worth deciphering.

Saw a ute advertised recently as a 'pickup'. Wont be long before bonnet becomes hood and boot becomes trunk.

It is because so much of our entertainment comes from the US, films, TV, music and news, it has such an impact on us. By the way what happened to actresses, it seems now they are all one gender. Some actresses were good looking sheilas too.

Am told our kids all know the USA emergency number and many don't know ours is 000.

Nth Qld football team are the cowboys, they should be the Ringers.

There are quite a few 'Americanisms' that get on my nerves.

The most recent is the use of the word 'swag'. I don't even know what it means, really - I can't see many common elements in pictures of people who are endowed with this mysterious quality. Looking at pictures, though (a Google image search is helpful here), I can't work out why having 'swag' is desirable. It would appear that 'swag' is a combination of anaemia, an inability to dress oneself and a tic that forces one to sneer and wreck a perfectly good photo.

Then there are the vacuous uses of the word 'like' to fill spaces in sentences (at least 'um' implies that you're trying to think of the right word), 'I know, right?' as a response to anything with which the speaker agrees (how am I to know if you are right or not when you say 'I know'?).

Finally, there's the rethinking of the word 'awkward'. I recently wrote on a student's work that her sentence structure was awkward. She got quite fired up and told me that I clearly didn't know what the word meant. 'Awkward', to her, means embarrassing - usually in a sexual way or in a way that makes a fool of the speaker/doer. These days, it appears that only abstract nouns can suffer from awkwardness. 'That awkward moment when ...' is acceptable, but 'he is an awkward boy' is not. I'm not sure if that's an Americanism: when it comes from young people, I tend to assume that it is.

I'm all for linguistic evolution and the acceptance of neologisms. I'm also for the development of new meanings for words. After all, Shakespeare (that hero of English literature) was among the guiltiest where such things are concerned. It would, however, be nice if we were a little discerning.

I agree with you Hasbeen on 'the car lost control'. That's an abrogation of responsibility. The car didn't do anything, the driver lost control. That one bothers me because it fundamentally changes the nature of the meaning of the sentence.

I find that creeping passive kind of language creeps into a lot of news reports and I won't have a bar of it.

Another one is 'dammit'. Damn has an 'n' damnit. Using an 'n' somehow seems more potent for some reason. Dammit feels like something a spoilt kid would say.

While we need to take on board we look very different to other cultures like most, I dislike us following America.
The use of terms inferring a male is a female dog.
That some one has sex with their mother is in use with some.
And as low as it gets.
I point out the failure to understand our culture, and maybe ours to understand theirs.
In the offensive reaction, over the top, ugly, to our fried chicken cricket adds.
We should walk in each others shoes first, but the above filth comes via the lower end of the gene pool.

Less an 'ism' .... but Halloween. Drives me nuts that we celebrate this in Australia.

Banjo, the use of "sir" by retail staff when addressing a client who has purchased a six dollar take away meal seems un Australian to me. I look at American society where the word sir is used if you buy a packet of chewing gum. it seems a bit hypocritical to me. There are no sirs or madams in Australia, we have a casual social circumstance that has fostered an egalitarian form of address that keeps us mindfull that we are all the same.

Being a baby boomer I smile when an 18yo kid says "thanks mate" as they hand me the change. It is a reinforcement of our casual society that does not place prominence on social position, rather it engenders a oneness that I personally appreciate as one trait that divides Australia from the bullsheiser accolades and meningless panderings.