'Separate in name and power': How America reinvented English

I moved from the UK to Canada as a pre-teen* and what I found shocking was how bothered a lot of Brits are about the fact that some people or places use different words and pronunciations. "We gave you a perfectly good language and you buggered it up!" my mother oft-repeated. You see it in shows like Top Gear and Taskmaster and especially the football vs. soccer thing with the world cup right now. The UK has so many regional dialects that I can only assume it's a national pride thing, especially as the US has eclipsed the UK in population, economy, and media.

* side note - emigrant parents, please try to time your move so that your kid doesn't have to experience puberty AND immigration at the same time.

The American and Australian dialects preserve a number of interesting archaisms.