Nigella Lawson sparks online debate after language comments

When it comes to describing food, Nigella Lawson relishes her choice of words. Who else, for example, would have claimed to 'wallow in pleasure' over salted caramel?

Such is the television cook's love of the glories of the English language, that she has now despaired at the misuse of her native tongue.

The 57-year-old, an Oxford University languages graduate, has provoked a lively debate about the 'Americanisation' of English after pointing out a few of her bugbears.

'I do wish people would stop saying utilise in place of use ... Ditto envision rather than envisage,' Miss Lawson wrote on Twitter.

In response, Twitter user Martin Peacock wrote: 'The American use of 'normalcy' rather than normality', to which Miss Lawson replied: 'Yes, this too.' Some of her 2.42million Twitter followers also pointed to the use of 'irregardless' and 'spelled' as further examples of Americanisms.

Joanne Whybrow wrote: 'Irregardless instead of regardless. I stop myself from correcting others when I hear it lest I seem rude (must be the Canadian politeness in me).'

John Mitchinson wrote: 'Add in: Obligated for obliged. Learnings for lessons.' And Simon Booker added: 'Don't get me started... See also: 'can I get' instead of 'may I have'.'

Others on Twitter criticised the use of 'myself' and 'yourself' when the speaker means 'me' and 'you', and 'gifted' instead of 'gave'.

Research has shown that a number of British words have slowly been replaced by Americanisms over the past 20 years.

In 2014 a project by Cambridge University and Lancaster University found that the word 'awesome', which is popular in the US, appears 72 times per million words in the UK compared with 'marvellous', which fell from 155 times per million more than 20 years ago to only two times per million.

Miss Lawson was a keen wordsmith long before finding fame and fortune through her cookery books and television programmes.

The mother-of-two, who studied medieval and modern languages at Oxford, worked as a book reviewer and restaurant critic before becoming literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986. 

She released her first cookery book, How To Eat, in 1998, with more following over the years including How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is reproduced here with permission.