Get gets Brits in another expression: “Can I get…?”, now nearly as ubiquitous in London restaurants as it is in Seattle. Part of the British complaint is that the American expression wrongly uses “can” rather than “may”. But possibility often requires permission, which is why the two overlap in meaning. Can has been used for permission at least since 1489, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. May is in steep decline in America in general, partly as can further colonises its role in signalling permission. But it is in almost as stark a retreat in Britain, too. According to one study, may’s frequency in British speech declined by 40% between 1961and 1991. That is well before American influence was magnified by shows such as “Friends”—often blamed for the “Can I get…?” invasion.

In a striking case, a piece of grammar was virtually dead in Britain and moribund in America, before an unlikely revival there and subsequent re-export to the mother country—the subjunctive, as in formulations like “The teacher asks that each student bring [not ‘brings’] a pencil.” In 1926 H.W. Fowler, godfather of Englishusage writers, considered this subjunctive “dying” in “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage”, except in archaic phrases such as “so be it” or in “pretentious journalism”.