There's a vocabulary test happening at fast-food counters. Nobody told you about it. You might already be failing it.

The Cartoon That Nailed It

On January 9, cartoonist Steven Collins published a strip in the Guardian. The setup: a man places a fast-food order. The punchline: he gets displaced. Not because he was rude. Not because he ordered wrong. Because he placed his order without using an Americanism.

Linguist Mark Liberman noticed. He filed it under "Linguistics in the comics" when he wrote about it in August 2026. That's the highest honor a language cartoon can receive, and Collins earned it.

The Americanism in Question

Two little words. "Can I get."

As in: "Can I get a burger?" Not "Can I have a burger?" Not "I'd like a burger, please." The American form. The form that's quietly taken over counters, cafes, and drive-throughs far beyond American borders.

Wikipedia lists "fanny pack" as an Americanism. So is the "can I get" construction. One you wear on your waist. The other you wear in your mouth, whether you know it or not.

The Dictionary Hasn't Caught Up Yet

Here's the delightful part. As of August 2026, Wiktionary's entry for "get" doesn't mention any of this. The whole "can I get" versus "can I have" shift, the cultural friction it causes, the cartoons it inspires. None of it. Not a word.

Language is moving faster than the lexicographers. This is not unusual. This is always how it goes. The words change first, the dictionaries follow years later, and the people in the middle just sound slightly foreign in their own hometown.

What Your Order Says About You

Word choice is dialect in disguise. You think you're ordering lunch. You're actually announcing where your English comes from, or at least where your English has been absorbing its influences.

Collins' cartoon works because the displacement feels real. Step up to a counter and use the wrong register and something shifts. You become briefly legible in a way you didn't intend.

One possibility is that "can I have" will keep retreating, marked as the foreign option in places where American media dominates. Another possibility is that both forms persist forever as regional shibboleths, and linguists keep filing cartoons about them for decades.

Either way: next time you order, notice what comes out. That's your dialect showing, right there at the counter, before the receipt prints.

Source: Languagelog