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  • Essay / Should good English be correct? - 1480

    If there was an official body responsible for regulating the entire English language, then no. Such an undertaking poses many major problems. The first would quickly arise as the negotiations progressed: what “correct” English should be “correct”? As demonstrated above, there is no single “good English”. There are at least two, what we in America call "proper English", which is associated with the general American or TV accent, and what the British call "received pronunciation". Most ideas about what constitutes a standard revolve around one of these two standards. Assuming that the Americans and the British can agree on which should be the right one (a major assumption), the old question remains as to why one of these two should be favored over one of dozens of other accents found around the world. A popular idea among linguists is that any use of a language is acceptable as long as it clearly communicates the idea to the receiver. While having a monolithic language can help with this, in some ways it can