Thanks for your fascinating read George. 

I think we shouldn't be too protective of our languages. As you rightly mention English (and other languages) is a collection of many centuries of influences and changes, this will continue. The stronger influences will take precendent. The "U" I am sure will one day go from colour and just as it seems very awkward to say aluminum I am sure one day we will. American English is more prolific on the internet so we can only assume it will become the norm. 

The likelihood is that in centuries to come all languages will have blended some more, but the prolific written/recorded word will slow down changes more than in the past in someways. Although it is also a fast track to new words, the internet and popular TV have added new words to public usage and dictionaries. 

Isn't it wonderful that indigenous languages from the Americas have not just survived in America but travelled around the wolrd like skunk, chipmonk, pecan, moccasin, totem and wigwam.

When Yosemite Sam cries suffering succotash we may not know what the food is but we enjoy the humor of the sound of word as WC Fields obviously did. Just as selling kumquats is funnier that selling tangerines or grapes.

Language is a living thing, poetic, humorous and beautiful. Jokes often don't translate properly as they often rely on puns and wordplay and sometimes even local pronunciation. A man was I a bar drinking a beer, he put his cap on the seat next to him. Another man entered the bar with a dog. While he ordered a pint his dog grapped the man's cap and started biting it. "Your dog is ruining my cap!" said the 1st man "What do I care!" says the second. "I don't like your attitude" says the first man. The second man looks at the cap and replies "It wasn't my 'at 'e chewed it was yours."       

This is an interesting thread.

As a kiwi living in Australia I often had people laughing at the colloquial terms I used. I likewise found some Australian terms quite comical.

Australians actually have some hilarious turns of phrase. Also some very derogatory and racist phrases.

One amusing example is talking about a certain repair technician that had “sexy fingers”.

“How’s that?” I asked one day.

“Well he f..ks everything he touches,” they explained.

Quite a few words in English are actually brand names. Like “hovering” a fairly British term meaning to vacuum. Hover being a dominate brand. Do you all now Dyson instead?

It may interest people to know that language changes 15% per century. This makes it easy to understand why you have to listen so carefully to Shakespeare in order to make sense of it. Those that do put in that effort are rewarded with the most subtle of brilliant prose.

Some words I’ve found a little baffling are American. A biscuit for example is what we’d call a bread bun. American biscuits are cookies. Likewise burgers are often referred to as sandwiches in the US. What we’d call a bread roll is a ‘sub’ as in Subway. We call it a salad roll vs a sandwich. A sandwich in NZ is two pieces of sliced bread.

Didn’t take long to start talking about food. Must be time for a midnight snack!

Food is a biggie - and clothes! Yes lots of people still refer to hoovering, although vacuumingh is still common, no one says Dysoning yet. But you are right about tradenames - many people will only say sellotape - although on Blue Peter they always referred to it as sticky backed plastic to avoid advertising.  

In the Uk we have lots of words for rolls like cob, bap and batch - they usually originate in a certain districts and then spread. Steve grew up eating batches - he said they are so called because they are baked in batches ie groups- and used to be sold still connected together at the sides in squares. 
 

There are certainly differences between dialects of English. Here in the States, beyond the dropping of U after O that most of us are familiar with, there are some differences to Commonwealth English that are sometimes awkward. The word "*****" refers to different parts of the body, for instance 😳

I studied French in high school, but the standard is Metropolitan French, not Canadian/Quebecois French. The Quebeckers are in some ways more strict about French than the French are; Kentucky Fried Chicken is known as KFC in most parts of the world (including France) but due to Quebec language law it must be called Poulet Frit Kentucky (PFK) in the province. When I visited Montreal, they picked me out pretty quickly as a non-native speaker 😀

I am assuming the asterisk word is "fan-ny" the system is set to reject some words as they were used incorrectly as member names when we first created ANW and had to deal with a percentage of idiots.

The KFC thing is really bizarre and very interesting, you expect brand names to just be used and not translated. I assume Burger King is not called roi du hamburger but am I wrong to assume that?

Like Spiderman in Spain is called Spiderman and not hombre araña. Yet weirdly Iron Man is to El Hombre de Hierro.