The Queen's English Society, made up of professionals, academics and self-confessed pedants, has created an English Academy "as a good English reference for everyone".
According to an article in The Times, the aim is to "to protect the language from impurities, bastardisations and the horrors introduced by the text-speak generation", in much the same way as the Académie Française does (or tries to do) for French.
The question is: does the English language need protecting? You can follow the debate by clicking on these links below. What do you think? Should English be allowed to evolve unhindered, or do we need an academy to set standards and protect the language from undesirable innovations, corruptions ... and Americanisms!
• l'Académie Anglaise (Macmillan Dictionary Blog)
• Do we need an Academy of English? The experts argue for and against (TimesOnline)
• Pedants’ revolt aims to protect English from spell of txt spk (TimesOnline)
• We need an Academy of English to save our beautiful language (Telegraph.co.uk)
• L'Académie Anglaise (English@SFX)
• The folly of preserving English in aspic (guardian.co.uk)
You can listen to a BBC Radio 4 discussion about this subject here.
COMMENT
Whether you agree with the Academy's aims or not, you'll find a lot of useful resources on their site including a library of reference material, articles on specific topics relating to The Academy and Good English Usage, and a Rogues' Gallery listing people who misuse English and should know better.
