<story><title>Germans decry influence of English as &apos;idiot&apos;s apostrophe&apos; gets approval</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/07/germany-influence-of-english-idiots-apostrophe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wolframhempel</author><text>I feel that most people instinctively assume that some institution, e.g. the government or the dictionary publishers are the authority on what constitutes &amp;quot;correct language&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s important to emphasize that language (included spelling) is something that develops organically and that the role of these institutions is just to capture the status quo.&lt;p&gt;At least that should be the case in free societies. Language is power - and controlling it is an important aspect of exercising control.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BlindEyeHalo</author><text>If you want to maintain mutual intelligibility of a nation you need a standardised set of rules to teach kids at school.&lt;p&gt;If you just let it &amp;quot;develop organically&amp;quot; without any governing body you get a wide range of dialects that will drift further apart from another and it will be very difficult to read any text that is 50 years old.</text></comment>
<story><title>Germans decry influence of English as &apos;idiot&apos;s apostrophe&apos; gets approval</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/07/germany-influence-of-english-idiots-apostrophe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wolframhempel</author><text>I feel that most people instinctively assume that some institution, e.g. the government or the dictionary publishers are the authority on what constitutes &amp;quot;correct language&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s important to emphasize that language (included spelling) is something that develops organically and that the role of these institutions is just to capture the status quo.&lt;p&gt;At least that should be the case in free societies. Language is power - and controlling it is an important aspect of exercising control.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Eddy_Viscosity2</author><text>Indeed, dictionaries and governments are just writing down what&amp;#x27;s already happening in the language.&lt;p&gt;In a way language is one of the only truly democratic institutions. We all vote for new words and new pronunciations by using them or not using them. The collective action of all these choices is the language.</text></comment>