Rather predictably, there were a few howls of protests from some folk in the USA. One even objected to linguistic professors who get involved in 'democratization chic' always 'rooting ... for the underdog' and suggesting 'every isolated incident of diffusion must be part of a trend'.
Sometimes it really does seem that the USA is totally isolated from the rest of the world. Indeed, students and visitors to the USA had better realise that they need to deal with the English that is used there, as Americans have little time or patience for new-fangled ideas about 'New Englishes' or anything else that might be going on in the rest of the world.
Just yesterday, there was a discussion on the change of Toyoda (the family name) to Toyota (the name of the car) on Language Log, and the writer made the unwise statement that 'in English Toyota and Toyoda tend to be pronounced much the same'. Now, this is only true in (some varieties of) American English, something that was quickly pointed out in the Comments section. But soon after, another contributor noted:
US English-speaking population: 300 million+What about the millions of speakers of English in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Philippines, Nigeria .... ?
UK English-speaking population 60 million
It really sometimes seems that people in the USA are not aware of what is going on in the rest of the world. There are millions and millions of speakers of English who do not live in the USA or the UK, but many folk in the USA seem to feel that these people are irrelevant.
