Accepting that what we're talking about isn't like French u, but /ʊ/ instead of standard (ie southern) /ʌ/ - the joke is that Londoners think that 'Oop North' starts at Watford (18 miles north of London). That may be exaggerating a bit, but the usage certainly starts south of Yorkshire, in the Midlands, for example in Birmingham, which is only 100 miles north of London. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brummie

What's more, it's very noticeable listening to BBC radio that it's not only people with regional accents that use it. It is also used in a modified RP by speakers who otherwise have absolutely standard 'BBC' pronunciation. And don't forget, the Irish use it as well.

@BJ - and other BrE speaking countries, it would seem. A quick google search brought up:

'Compliance Program - current areas of focus as at 11 July 2012' - Australian government
'Pricing as at April 2012' - Standard Bank, South Africa
'Work plan - projected targets as at 1 October 2012' - International Financial Reporting Standards organisation

And I agree with you about the difference, at least as far as BrE is concerned.

@Corinna, you took the words out of my mouth - how do the 'thing' supporters explain 'another' - as you say, the whole point of another 'think 'is that the first 'think' was wrong.

@Dang - I don't want to get into a right version / wrong version argument, and it's only natural that we each prefer the one we're used to. But most authorities do seem to think that the 'think' version did indeed come first, and the Ngram graph I linked to above seems to show that the 'thing' version, although admittedly getting more popular, didn't really take off till the 1960s.

A Google Books search gives interesting results - 145,000 (think) to 36,000 (thing), and the first page of the 'think' results mainly consists of books on the English language suggesting the think version to be the original and most logical. The first entry is from Garner's Modern American Usage by Brian Garner, who I don't always agree with, but who seems to carry quite a lot of weight amongst grammar fans in the States. He says - 'It may not be funny anymore, but it makes sense: X is wrong, so eventually you're going to think Y instead.'

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=got+another+think+coming

Hi Hairy Scot - I don't think it was me who said blurring of meaning. And just to get things straight, I use bring and take the same way as you do, and teach my students to do likewise. But for me rules are not written in stone, and are not the same for all English speakers.

Many of the words we take for granted today have changed meaning over the centuries, and we can see certain grammatical forms being used less and less. There are already certain areas where AmE speakers and BrE speakers have different preferences - group nouns, use of the subjunctive, words like among(st), etc. This doesn't necessarily lead to the end of the world.

English has been constantly changing ever since the people of those different Germanic tribes started talking to each other. People have been 'bending' the rules right from the start - that's how the language came into existence. At what point do you freeze the language and say - Right, these are the rules. I'm afraid for me, language doesn't work like that.

No doubt these changes happen for all sorts of different reasons, and it would probably need a specialist to explain why. But in the case of 'bring' in the US, I seem to remember reading that it was quite widely used in TV ads. If that use becomes more general, then there is no problem with understanding, the rule has simply been modified, like others before it. And in any case, some commentators, like the Longman Dictionary of the English Language 1984, make the point that 'either verb can be used when the point of view is irrelevant' (MWDEU).

@mediator:
I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is - Merry Wives of Windsor - Host - Act 2 Scene 3
in the morn I will bring you to your ship - The Tempest - Prospero - Act 5 Scene 1
Will you go to them? I will bring you thither - Romeo and Juliet - Nurse - Act3 Scene 2

You'll find them all here - http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

'Shakespeare's works are not noted for accuracy' - if you're talking about historical accuracy, I'd agree with you, but I think you're talking about language. Could you explain?

@Perfect Pedant - if that was true, nobody would understand each other. Of course there are rules, the natural underlying rules of the language, and 99% percent of them cause no problems at all. But occasionally things change, words change meanings, grammatical forms drop out of use. This has been happening throughout the whole history of the language.

@Jasper - whomever is an interesting one as it seems to be having a bit of a revival. I don't think I've ever heard this used in British English. And a lot of the modern usage seems to be hypercorrection. People think it sounds 'better', 'more correct', even when using it for the subject. Just as Agustin seems to think whom is the formal version of who, which of course it isn't.

@Agustin - your example of "Not just I/me whom thinks..." is definitely not correct, even for a purist on the one hand, or a whom agnostic like me on the other. The relative pronoun here is the subject of 'thinks' - and whom is never used for the subject, only for the object. But I can see how you might get this impression because people are forever being corrected for not using whom in the correct place, when it really is only optional nowadays.

@ Eugene Ryder - I can assure you it cuts both ways on this forum. But I totally agree that getting into national corners is, as they say, not very helpful. And as you point out, this is not simply American usage, but is also popular in Ireland. And MWDEU has several instances from Shakespeare. But in terms of use in print, for example, it does seem more prevalent in the US than in the UK. (That's an observation, not a judgement)

As I understand it, this is quite a recent usage in the States and is by no means cut and dried in terms of acceptance. In fact all the criticism of it I've seen up to now has been on American websites, not from British sources. The standard line seems to be exactly the same in the US as in the UK - http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/bring-versus-take.aspx

Incidentally foreign learners seem to have more problems with take and get, as in - I'll just go and take a pen.

@Urpal - most past participles can be adapted to functions as adjectives - something shocked him, he is shocked. It looks like the same has happened here. The dictionary definitions I gave refer to the verb, but at least two of the examples refer to nouns, with a third being borderline between being an adjective or being a passive. I don't think you can be quite so exclusive.

@Hairy Scot and Perfect Pedant - all the dictionaries you mentioned are British and this seems to be an American phenomenon, so I'm not sure what you're proving. Many dictionaries do not include the excellent Scottish word 'outwith', but that doesn't mean it's not a word.

@Lilian - some people might find your repeated use of ppl and your hectoring tone equally as irritating a you find the use of 'conversate'.

As for the Urban Dictionary, it is often just a repository for one group of young people's prejudices against another group of young people, as in this bit of bile - "A word used by backwards, ignorant, illiterate inner city trash who mean to say 'converse'." - I gave up bothering with the Urban Dictionary a long time ago.

Dictionary.com has a rather more measured and intelligent discussion here - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conversate

@D.A.W - I think you need to sort your moods from your tenses or aspects. There ain't no such thing as the progressive mood - there is a progressive (or continuous) aspect, and there are progressive (or continuous) tenses - He is leaving, she was leaving, they will be leaving. And I have no idea what you mean by emphatic mood. There are three moods in English - Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative. And far from being 'not used so much for many of our verbs', Indicative mood is what we use for most verbs nearly all the time. What verbs are you talking about?

And since the F-word is famously of Anglo-Saxon origin, I can't imagine how you think it is a peculiarly American word - the French, after all, call the British 'Les f***offs'. And while we're at it, the C-word isn't American either. In terms of Anglo-Saxon expletives, we all share a common heritage.