More than 40 countries have established academic forces to protect their languages. Cardinal Richelieu was the first, founding the illustrious L’Académie française in 1634 with a mandate “to give rules to our language, and to render it pure and elegant.” France deemed it necessary a few years ago to amend its Constitution, specifying French as the official language of the republic.

Culture & language: the English language
In no area of culture is the collision more intense than over the English language. The web has changed English more radically than any invention since paper, and much faster. According to Paul Payack, of the Global Language Monitor, there are currently 988,974 words in the English language, with thousands more emerging every month. The British Council says the English language now has special status of one kind or another in 75 countries. One-third of the world’s books are published in English, two-thirds of all scientists read English, three-quarters of the world’s mail is written in English and four-fifths of all electronic communications are in English. English has become the common linguistic denominator, though it is not an essential minimum factor that if you are proficient only in Hindi or a language other than English you cannot aspire for a high office in India. Whatever you are a Korean executive in Shanghai, a German official in Brussels or a Brazilian biochemist in Sweden, you’re probably speaking English. The world attempts an international brand of English, though not always intelligible, it is its native speakers who have lost the most.

English Continues its Run
The English language has come a long way in 425 years. In 1582, the English grammarian Richard Mulcaster could say that English was “of small reach, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all.” In the same year William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, and the language itself has since flourished as magnificently as the playwright himself. More than one billion people now speak it. Another billion people are learning it. Despite all the new Englishes, it’s the American (movies) and British (stiff upper lip) versions that carry prestige. Australia, USA and Britain, in particular, have invested heavily in branding themselves as destinations for learning English.

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