The short answer is no , there isn ' t a proper way to speak English . But we can go a little deeper than that . Let ' s start with written English , because it ' s easier to talk about . There is widespread agreement about what constitutes Standard Written English . We can see that agreement explicitly in that fact that style guides all agree on the vast majority of usage points . And you can see the agreement implicitly in the fact that writers , journalists , academics , and the like use SWE when they write something for publication . SWE is no better than any other English , but it is perceived as being the proper English to use in writing . When it comes to spoken English , though , things get tricky . It ' s difficult to define what Standard English is exactly . Let ' s assume that all native English speakers agree on something like 99 % of grammar and usage . I ' m not talking about things like pronunciation and vocabulary here . It ' s that other 1 % that causes all of the letters to the editors , and the Jeremiads against textspeak , and the pedantic corrections on social media , and the existence of things like Eats , Shoot Leaves and Grammar Girl and the Elements of Style . Take something like The sommelier made some very nice recommendations to my friends and I . Some will argue that it ' s standard . Millions of native speakersmany of them college educateduse x and I in object position . It passes unnoticed all of the time . Others will argue that it violates a rule of English grammar though those folks can rarely explain anything beyond If you remove the other person . . . and therefore cannot be standard . Now throw in all of the regional variations . The dialects . The arguments made by different style guides . The politics and education and race and power and economics . The elitism and snobbery . The cold truth that you will indeed be expected to speak a certain way in certain situations , but that the people who remind you of that cold truth rarely understand language in any meaningful way themselves . It ' s fraught , man . So the best I can do is say , yes , there is some sort of Standard English , and there are situations in which you will be expected to use it , but good luck getting any sort of definitive explanation of what constitutes that Standard English .