Changes in culture and language can creep up on you slowly when you live outside your native land

After moving from the United States to Europe some seventeen years ago, a distance from day-to-day life in the U.S. has crept up. Some things that mark a growing gulf between what was then and what is now emerge over time—I’ll first notice them from the corner of my eye, only to see them come into focus as they reach some kind of critical mass. Changes in language usage is one of those things.

Current residents of the U.S. might wonder why I am so late in taking notice of them. Part of it of course has to do simply with living outside the U.S., visiting very rarely, and having distance from American English. Another part might have to do with not having owned a television while living in Ireland, which limited our exposure to American-produced popular media. So in making my observations I am probably confessing to being thoroughly out-of-touch culturally with the land of my birth … but what the hell.

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