Learning English: A Useless Mandatory Chore?

robvan Contributor

Member since 28 April 2014

robvanContributor06 October 2020 09:13:14

#41

127

@Ciambella:
>There are hundreds of mistakes which the government created when they forcefully overhauled an established language, but again, this is not a post for it.

Yep, let a language evolve naturally and don't follow the French habit of central-government edicts, much as new words and expressions might annoy you (I have my pet hates too). I believe this is one of the reasons that English could become a world language, above and beyond the country's once global empire. They didn't mandate 'proper' usage, that role was taken by dictionaries that recorded popular usage that became ingrained, and thereby 'standard'. More 'democratic' and 'natural', wouldn't you say? "Le weekend" in French, yes?

Serious language scholars don't lament the fact that texts written one or two centuries ago seem odd to us. It's simply evolution at work.