You can whinge.
Or even whine if you prefer.
But English is American is British is Australian in today's global language village.
Confused?
A recent BBC News Magazine article detailed the slow but steady drip of Britishisms into American English.
Terms like 'ginger', 'twee', 'toff' and 'spot' have apparently set the American vernacular on fire while at the same time, probably caused at least some of the guardians of the Queen's tongue to feel a little smug at the reverse influence.
But both Americanisms and Britishisms pervade Australian English, creating an English language fusion which, for all intents and purposes, appears to be the new normal.
Any journalist who has ever typed 'dove' instead of dived or 'sidewalk' instead of footpath has felt the wrath of the bastions of English as it is spoken in Australia, complete with offers of English lessons, dictionary links and usually a letter filled with such scathing rebukes, the only recourse is to pass it around the newsroom in wonder.
But Roly Sussex, an Emeritus Professor of Applied Language Studies at the University of Queensland, says while Australian English in its purest form has become “very self confident and creative”, it still borrows from its more influential counterparts.
“There are a lot of British people who continue to visit and leave the language behind and even more so, Australians are major tourists to Britain every year and bring things back with them,” Professor Sussex said, naming naff off and cheers as examples.
“The other one (influence) is American and there are thousands of Americanisms around us, some of them are spelling, some are grammar. For example, there is a health and fitness centre on the way to Cleveland bay which is spelt c-e-n-t-e-r and of course, the Australian Labor Party has been L-a-b-o-r ... and that was because they were talking to the Americans at the time and copied the spelling.”
Which, Professor Sussex said, was not necessarily a bad thing.
For every Australian who turns their nose up at 'trash', there is an older Australian who remembers having a quiet word over 'OK'.
“Gradually they become more used and younger people pick them up to the point where nobody is aware any more that there has ever been anything but an ordinary way of saying things in Australia,” Professor Sussex said.
“For example, my car has a park brake and it used to be a parking brake. And spark plugs once upon a time, were sparking plugs. The 'ing' ones were British and the ones without 'ing' were American.
"In your supermarket at the moment, you can find can fruit rather than canned fruit and a lot of these wouldn't be recognised as American at all.”
While Professor Sussex said, when it came to Australian English, “what is ours and what is not ours is becoming increasingly fuzzy” there are still some terms which are as true blue as Alf Stewart and crow stoning.
“Rort is a terrific word,” Professor Sussex said of Australianisms.
“When there is a rort on, someone has had their hand in the till or they have been manipulating things for their own advantage, but somehow, even the word sounds as though it is a bit disreputable.
“One of the few Australianisms which has taken root in America is ankle-biters for children and they know in a cute way that Australians say g'day, but our English seems to them, quaint, and something to be wondered at, particularly the diminutives, like wino and derro and so on.
“One of the things we are known for is being very, very creative and one of my favourite phrases is 'flat out like a lizard drinking', where you pick up two ideas about flat out; one is physically horizontal and the other is very busy and you put the two together and you get something which to someone from overseas sounds really obscure, but then they get the hang of it and they think it sounds rather nice.”
Then there is the Australian habit of dropping half a word or just adding an 'e' sound to the end to make an abbreviation, a habit Professor Sussex said is still going strong and still confusing visitors.
“The things ending in 'e' like 'cardie' and 'uni' and so on, they are very Australian and people who aren't used to these things get confused,” he said.
“The Brits who come here spend quite a while getting used to the way we speak, for example, 'I'm going to Bundy' or 'I'm going to Rocky this evening', they wouldn't know what we are talking about.”
But other Australian words have gone the way of the Tasmanian Tiger.
“Some Australianisms like 'ace' and 'grouse' as a means of expressing approval, are pretty much dead. Occasionally people in their 50s or 60s may use it humorously about the way we used to speak, but there are a lot of bits about Australian English which have fallen out of use,” Professor Sussex said.
“Nowadays, almost all of our words of approval are American, like great, cool and neat and even bad, which can be used to say something is very good.”
But while you could feverishly point to Australian dictionaries until you were blue in the face, or lament the gormlessness of the vocabulary of today's youth, Professor Sussex is of the mind to embrace most of it.
“The language is in an incredible state of ferment at the moment,” he said.
“It is unstable, there are multiple models around, there is American and then there young-persons American, like black-English vernacular, there is a bit of British, there are lots of older Australian things and we just have an extraordinary rich pallet of colours to draw on when we are writing and speaking.
“Where possible, in Australia I prefer to use Australianisms, I think they are more appropriate, whereas, if I am doing a broadcast on the ABC, I might be a bit more academic in the way I talk.
“But I think this broad, lively rich sort of English that we identify with is excellent for us and one of the ways we mark our maturity as a language.”