Quote Originally Posted by A Quiet Monkfish View Post
A lot of 'Americanisms' are actually of English origin, having survived export whilst losing influence in the UK. Similarly with words like 'sidewalk' and pavement'. Sidewalk is English in origin, pavement French. As the song goes, you say 'Tomato' with an 'A' as opposed to an 'AH'. When British started colonizing America a lot of English in the provinces would have pronounced it the American way. It was in London and the upper echelons of society where Received Pronunciation was the norm, that the 'AH' sound in tomato spread to the general UK population. There's a really good piece on The Great Vowel Shift here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOOAb7erAmE
Indeed, and as I stated in my first post in this thread.
One interesting factor is that the larger a population, the quicker the language changes. Hence what were once small colonies thinly spread over large distances retaining vocabulary since dispensed with by the linguistic 'mother' countries.
Conversely, those 'mother' countries are now in the minority regarding population numbers - and let's not forget the influence on American English by immigrants whose mother tongue wasn't English.