In the musical “My Fair Lady,” Professor Henry Higgins expresses outrage at the “cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” The guilty parties are the Scots, the Irish, the Welsh — and of course Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl from London with whom the linguistic purist falls in love. If Americans escape his scathing verdict it’s because “in America, they haven’t used [English] for years!”

What would Higgins say today? Even on the BBC, once a bastion of the “Queen’s English,” the way presenters speak immediately identifies them not only as Irish, Scottish and Welsh but as American, Australian, South African, Indian, Kenyan, not to mention as hailing from South London or the wilds of northern England.