>>The reason that happens is because there exists no academic body that
>>determines what is or isn't English. For instance, for French,
>>there's l'Academie Française, which determines what is and isn't
>>official French.
>
>Yeah, I heard about that. Not only does it keep French 'pure' it
>stamped out every other language (Breton for example) spoken in France
>by banning them from the schools. Nice to know freedom of speech is so
>respected.

Then why is Provencal still a living, strong language?

Besides, the only country in the world I know of that protects free speech is the United States, and there's no official language in the US, nor do I expect that there ever will be. Variants of Spanish are growing in strength (Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, Mexican, Cuban, and others, depending on where in the States you are), and in almost every substantial city (say, population greater than about 100,000) there's at least one section of the city where the storefront signs are either in English and another language, or just in that other language. Spanish is the most common one, and I'd say that Chinese probably the next most common. (I love New York's Chinatown, personally, and probably two-thirds of the signs are *only* in Chinese. I've also seen signs in Korean, Japanese, Thai, Hindi...) In parts of New England, many of the signs -- even gov't ones -- are in both French (Quebecois, really) and English.

-- Sean --

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