Like the big collaborative projects of the internet, such as Wikipedia and Firefox, like the decentralized network of websites and machines that make up the internet itself, language is a network, a web. Language is the ultimate participatory democracy. To put it in technological terms, language is humanity's most spectacular open source project.

Irony is a linguistic trust fall.

Language is humanity's most spectacular open source project.

Dictionaries are the record of how people are already using the language, not providers of words for us to start using.

...despite the fact that it's technically written in Old English rather than Old Icelandic, Icelanders would have an eaiser time learning to read Beowulf than would modern English speakers.

...despite the fact that it's technically written in Old English rather than Old Icelandic, Icelanders would have an easier time learning to read Beowulf than would modern English speakers.

Language's only known predator is other people: many languages have been stamped out or imposed on others through war or conquest.