Identifying one way of speaking and writing the "Queen's English" was all part of royalty's way of controlling the populace and creating a more concrete divide between the classes.

Now if only Brits would wake up and sweep the whole anachronistic system of royalty from their society, that would show more respect in themselves and recognition that people should have the right to choose their own leaders. Their continuing support of a birthline-imposed ruling class prevents them from returning the stolen royal wealth to whom it rightly belongs: the citizens.

I do acknowledge, though, that even Americans identify a self-imposed class system by viewing those not only with incorrect English as inferior, but also those who use strong Southern and Midwestern English in their speech. Ever since the day of CNN, it has become clearer that "educated" Americans are perceived as smarter and more successful if they speak West Coast-accented English like Anderson Cooper and Barack Obama.

The royalty in the UK is only a figurehead.

They elect a Prime Minister just as we elect a President.

This decay of the English language goes right along with the decay of morals, trust, and class (informal elegance of style, taste, and manner -- [moron!]) in our society. It is heart breaking that we are living in this subprime life this way. Real life is so much better.

I don't agree that our morals are decaying, but I do agree that very few people have any class any more.

@Tina - while the Royalty is a figurehead, we don't elect a Prime Minister. We elect constituency Members of Parliament and the majority party (or, in the present case, parties) form a Government under the leadership of a Prime Minister (who must be an elected constituency MP) and is nearly always the party leader (I cannot think of an example to the contrary) and so throughout the whole 4 week election campaign the electorate know who they will get as PM depending on the party of the local MP for whom they vote.

@amietamant - the Monarch is a figurehead (as has been mentioned) and has no actual power beyond ceremonial (which I contend have psychological importance) and hasn't for several centuries. Power rests in the elected Government. We cut a King's head off 350 years ago for trying to make himself above Parliament!

Your most contentious assertions are based, I suspect, on certain misconceptions (which Forbes, I think it is, fall into as well). The 'stolen Royal wealth' presumably includes the Crown Jewels, the Royal Palaces, the Crown Estates, etc. However, the Monarch does not own the vast majority of these - they are owned by the State and held in trust by the Monarch for the Nation. (I doubt PM David Cameron would look very good in a crown.) Moreover, the Monarchy was practically bankrupt under the reign of Victoria leading to new arrangements for how they might self-sustain.

The 'birth-line imposed ruling class' only works if you ignore the deviations and breaks in lineage particularly upon the death of Elizabeth I - which lead to a somewhat distant relative James I/VI (King of Scotland) becoming King of England which led to the eventual Union of England & Wales and Scotland. And 'ruling' works only if you genuinely believe any power rests in the Monarch. The current Queen's surname should actually be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha from her German forebears (Victoria's mother and husband). Not so strangely, they changed their somewhat Germanic name to Windsor when WWI looked inevitable so they could disassociate themselves from their war-preferring cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II.

What is odious, and far lesser known, is that around a quarter of all the land in Britain is owned by the directly-descended families of the couple of hundred nobles who invaded in 1066 - you can tell them from their names like de Lacey, de Burgh or Fitzgerald. They have no direct political power but wealth and the attendant power that can confer. While the Monarch's power and wealth has waned (and they're mainly German) these Norman French have passed their wealth and power unchecked from generation to generation for the best part of a millenia.

The only way to deal with this would be to seize their estates and redistribute their wealth and something tells me that this would not go down too well with many American commenters.

On the actual article subject (!): I have found that the collapsing standards in spoken English are fine in face to face contact but have (and are having) a direct effect on written English where people are spelling things as they pronounce them. Combine this with 'txt spk' and I end up getting emails from people which are incomprehensible, barely literate gibberish. Given that the sole pupose of language is to communicate facts, thoughts, emotions and ideas letting standards slip is somewhat self-defeating and allows those rich enough to afford a good education to dominate those who are left inarticulate and unable to express their contrary opinion to those in power.

By the way, could this be the daftest Americanism creeping into British English: 'Fedz'. As in FBI. As in American FBI. As in FBI that Britain doesn't have, has never had and is unlikely to ever have. Madness.

Same here Joe. Some of the mistakes I see my fellow college class mates and even instructors make sometimes make me cringe. I cannot count the number of times I have seen class members use the letter 'u' instead of 'you'. Sometimes the instructors make grammatical mistakes but not spelling ones.

I definitely think Twitter and Facebook should be lifting their character limits. Both are not needed and just force everyone to try and come up with decipherable ways of spelling things with acronyms and abbreviations.

I watched a young girl at a light that took a few changes before we got through. She would put the cell to text up and down up and down oblivious to her surroundings. Then I got a little ahead of her and saw her Camary totally caved in on the front. Looked like repeats with different color paint. That is a OMG fur shr :(

I could care less how dumbed down the new generations are just don't kill anyone with your mindless texting while driving.....

I agree. While I think the way that language evolves and changes is a wonderful thing, I worry about this trend. It reminds me too much of Idiocracy...

It's not bad either if people strive to conserve a language just as it has been taught to us. Languages today have become bastardized and, while some words have been incorporated by our daily lives, others are simply made up. I'm a native Spanish speaker and everyday I'm disappointed when I hear people not speaking it correctly. You are right in that every language constantly evolves, but by doing so the original form is lost. Having a society that strives to protect the original form of the language (or at least not be as open to changes) does nothing wrong and, in my opinion, demonstrate a passion for the art of language itself.

I understand your point of view. But even Spanish is a "bastardization" of Vulgar Latin. We need these societies for the standardization of languages. I have a passion for the art of language as well, however as a linguist, I'm more interested in the description of language and not the prescription of it. To each his own.

True, language evolves. But we really need someone to hold fast in defense of proper ussage, otherwise the effective communication of ideas will suffer. I cringe when I see someone has written "I would of" when "I would've" is indicated by the context, or when "your" is used in place of "you're." A breif review of the comments to any article such as this one will reveal the sloppy usage and sloppy thinking of those writing the comments. I have no doubt that my own writing could be improved. I am willing to be corrected. I won't defend my own sloppiness.

@ Joe s, and you weren't confused by it, so it was effective, the problem with people defending language is that it's usually mental illness rather than anything productive and they often don't even know the rules they're trying to enforce.

Your and you're are typos, and the more people I see whining about it the more of them I make because I get sick of all the whining about minor typos by people who need medication.

Ultimately, it's a type of bullying and I for one would be grateful to see all those people shut up and let the rest of us get back to business. I rarely see any grammar corrections where they're desperately needed, as in where the meaning isn't clear. I always see them on pedantic things like failing to include the oxford comma or misspelling there.

Language does evolve, but many of the most cherished grammar rules haven't been true in at least 500 years. Splitting infinitives, dangling participles, ain't, the use of they for the singular third person are all things that are perfectly acceptable when used properly. And for the most part you can find examples going back hundreds of years.

I teach English and it makes me sad to see how thoroughly incompetent the defenders of the English language are when they don't even know the rules they're defending.

Frank, if you are an English teacher, do you tolerate "minor typos" on your students' papers? If you do, shame on you. Typos, misspellings, misplaced modifiers, and other common mistakes that are nade on scholarly essays or other academic work is inexcusable. While I get your point about people getting all bent out of shape over minor typos in forums like this, I still believe that it shows a lack of caring about what one writes when these mistakes are allowed to proliferate. Even this forum has spell checker. People should use it. If they don't, then I don't think I can be blamed for thinking them either lazy or just plain stupid.

I agree with Joe S.

We have to have SOME standards.

We understand language, we just don't want to be forced to say:
"Dude's swagger is gr8, brb g2g buy some bling" rather than something along the lines of "The gentleman is attractive. I will be right back, I have to buy some jewelry" in civil, formal, conversation. It's fine for vulgar shorthand, but not for anything outside of that context.

Don't worry MP it won't be long before everyone just reverts back to grunting and pointing their clubs at whatever it is they are talking about to get the point across. Look at what's happened in just shy of twenty years. Imagine the rate of this de-evolution continuing another 20 or 30 years...people will be back to blowing pigment across their hands on cave walls. LOL.

I didn't see anything in the article that blamed Americans or Americanism for the disinterest in keeping the society together. Not really sure where you are getting that from and your post comes off as bitter. Did you know someone who suggested that Americans are to blame for the demise of proper English? It seems, according to this article, that the society was more focused on English speakers within the UK not on American speakers of the language.

Just an FYI, people in the UK speak English, not German. While the present dynasty in the monarchy is of German ancestry, they no longer speak German. As a matter of fact, George V changed the name of the dynasty from Saxe-Coburg-Gothe to Windsor because they didn't want to be perceived as being German. My grandfather was German, but that doesn't make me German.

Al Czervik, that is an extremely arrogant & ignorant point of view, and you aren't doing the rest of the American population any favours regarding worldwide opinion with that viewpoint.

Great Britain were able to successfully defend their own lands from Nazi invasion during WW2 without help from anyone from the USA (perhaps Canadians & exiled Europeans may have been on hand to lend assistance?) however it's true that the USA contributed in the offensive at the western front. Yes, the USA were pivotal, but you must get your facts right.

The suggestion that Britain would be speaking German if it weren't for the USA is downright insulting.

@Deb P. - in part, Al is referring to the fact that the people in the UK don't speak German because we entered WWII and helped "save the world" from Hitler and the Nazis. What people like Al don't mention is that we entered the war because Pearl Harbor was attacked, not out of the goodness of our hearts to help the UK. Pearl Harbor provided an excuse for Roosevelt to enter the war, but since anti-war sentiment was very high, who knows what would have happened if the Japanese hadn't decided to drag us into it militarily? To hear people like Al tell it though, we entered WWII simply because Britain needed us. They "forget" Pearl Harbor and also ignore the fact that Britain fought valiantly for 2 years, losing thousands of military and civilian lives and surviving The Blitz, before we showed up.

My brother used to live in London and thought he was being very clever when he'd comment to Brits about our showing up in WWII to "save their bacon." Until one day, a Brit more clever than my brother responded "Yes, you helped a great deal, and we appreciate it. But if it happens again, it would be nice if you showed up on time. Otherwise, the next time you guys want to invade some country in the Middle East and look for fictitious WMDs, you can do it without us."

Al,

It is actually the other way around. American English is the English that was spoken during those times in Britain, or closer to it. The Queen's English is fairly new in comparison.

The Americans had a role in defeating the Germans and her allies during WWII but we certainly did not do it by ourselves, as people like to think.
The Russians played a big part in defeating the Germans.
They were our allies back then.

So what you are saying is why teach grammar at all?

That makes no sense.

Hehe. :)

Certainly not our children's teachers. Most are ignoramuses.

Because they have been allowed to get away with being ignoramuses, Blamo.

Only if you end up talking like that. Otherwise you just have to turn a few off while making your tweet. Actually it takes some creativity to come up with ways to shorten words but still make them recognizable but that is one good thing about the Human brain. Even if a word is scrambled most people can identify what that word is. If there is a type most people can see the context of the sentence and understand what the originator of that type actually meant.

But you are right, talking or typing like the way you tweet all of the time is a sign of brain damage in some cases and laziness in most.

Hear hear!!

.....let me guess Dennis....not much of a speller???????

That's irrelevant, "doc," but I think we still need to adhere to some basic "spelling" principles so that we can all understand each other. Unregulated language will just lead to an outburst of different styles and before we know it, we're all speaking different languages. In your house and on twitter you can do whatever you like, but in professional writing we definitely need to follow rules.