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the Cold War, a series of initiatives led by the United States to put pressure on the Soviet Union from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The linguistic effects of all this indirect diplomacy on people already in the English-speaking world were felt as far away as Australia. According to Sidney J. Baker, the author of a book on Australian slang, “It was not until the war sent half a million American troops across the Pacific to Australia that Australians began to realize how little they knew about American slang.”5

THE CULTURAL INVADERS

As military hostilities ended, a still more massive invasion brought American pop culture, such as movies, music, radio, and TV shows, as well as consumer products of all types. Hollywood films, which had already gained many fans overseas with actors like Mickey Mouse, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and the Marx Brothers, took over the world’s screens in a serious way. And they have reigned ever since, even though India’s Bollywood produces more films.

Among the more popular American ambassadors in this period were Ford, Chevrolet, Frigidaire, Maytag, and of course Glenn Miller, Fats Waller, and Benny Goodman with their jazz and swing. Although the lyrics were often superficial and nonsensical, they had enough pizzazz to be swallowed with great relish by foreign admirers.

Other major players included international media giants based in the United States. They saw big opportunities early and took maximum advantage of them. Among the leaders were Disney, Time Warner, and News Corp. All joined the race for dollars, leaving few people untouched by American language and culture. Lane Crothers, a professor at Illinois State University, explains how these firms came to spread so much pop culture to such a receptive world:

The early transnational corporations that produced movies, music and television programs took advantage of permissive laws, an open culture, a diverse audience and ideal filmmaking weather to build global empires of audiovisual entertainment.6

This gave American producers an advantage in competing for the mass international entertainment audience that exists today.

BUILDING MARKETING MOJO

The cultural invaders consolidated their beachheads by building promotional bridges in the form of marketing tie-ins, such as Mickey Mouse ears and Star Wars T-shirts, almost all accompanied by the American lingo. Other leaders were the industrial giants General Motors and General Electric, as well as the inviting images of Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, Papa John, Starbucks, and other popular franchisers.

Over the years, American business firms have also contributed the power of employment by establishing branches, setting up phone banks abroad, and hiring workers far from U.S. shores to staff these operations, especially today in India, Latin America, and the Philippines, where wages tend to be low. The government has no recent numbers for outsourced jobs, but Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, estimated in 2010 that 3.3 million service jobs will have moved offshore by 2015.

TOO MUCH ENGLISH ABROAD?

Over many years of visiting foreign countries, my wife and I have often been frustrated by an unseen yet ever present language barrier: the nearly unanimous tendency of residents of those countries to respond in English to our questions in their own languages.

We always want to practice our foreign languages but find it difficult to do so because of this barrier. We attribute foreigners’ determination to their desire to (1) practice their own English, and (2) show how multilingual they are. Many fellow travelers have confirmed the same problem.

Most people in other countries can readily recognize foreign accents and learning errors as they spar with us—and win—over language practice time. Dammit.

Wrapped up in all these diplomatic—and profitable—bundles has been the popular lingo of the United States with its imaginative words and phrases, including hip, kooky, oddball, and more recently nerd and homie.