Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity.

Yesterday's abomination is today's rule.

Afrikaans was the language of the white minority in South Africa, and the forced learning of it created resentment among blacks. Even so, Nelson Mandela made it a point to learn this language in prison in anticipation that it would help him lead the whole of South Africa.

If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.

Standard languages are inventions, most of them confined to a recent period in human history. They are codes that give access not to clear thinking and basic decency but to the structured parts of our lives such as job interviews, political speeches, literary essays, novels, and the like. They signal education and learning, but they are not the same thing as education and learning.

Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself.

There is really only one way to learn good writing: good reading and extensive writing and revising.

Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel rather sheepish has reading any answer. The 1950s? The Edwardian era? The real answer, however rarely expressed, seems to be "when Island it as a young person.