geni wrote:
On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic mail@itam.ws wrote:
geni wrote:
Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou" still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation there is is often not goverment mandated.
--- in mayor cases Academies( or similar institutions) are working on language standardisation. So that are working under Goverment policy on educational and science level. Freedom in that filed is also regulated on Goverment level, so in any case it is political meter. On that level I was talking about.
Historically things have been somewhat different.
Please check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling)
Part of text: This table gives the accepted spellings (following *government *guidelines and major dictionaries).
Governments at the present time are one of the few groups to produce enough material to need to create manuals of style. that does not mean they are required for standardisation of language
Governments also need style manuals for official publications, but these do not have the force of law for non-governmental operations. Our schools never make reference to any kind of official spelling or grammar when teaching children. English, more than any other language is based on history, custom and usage. There is such a thing as poor language skills for native speakers, but one feature that makes it very difficult for the health of other languages is the easy acceptance by English of ways of speaking drawn from other languages.