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Comment by andrewzah | Hacker News Reader

Really, it's for the better. Languages change naturally over time and institutions like for French or Korean have little bearing on that. It's better to have style -guides- than to try and enforce usages of a language that differ from how it's actually used in real life.

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I have learnt Spanish in an academic setting and to have an Academia to refer to is invaluable.

I study Korean, which also has a similar institution, and it's not really that helpful.

Real language usage is completely different than what's taught in classroom or academic environments. They are always out of date, and don't teach casual/slang usage (aka real usage by real people, not textbook language). Regular dictionaries have been invaluable.

You are confusing language and its written representation. Sure languages change, that doesn't mean its writing system shouldn't be standardized, as there is a lot of benefits (efficiency) when it's the case. There isn't much discussion about language usage anyway save for a few points.

English spelling being standardized so early is one of the problems with it. The language has changed since the spelling was standardized (minus a few debates on the letter u).

If only there was a society of learned people, writers, academics, and civil servants, united for the advancement of language, empowered to regularly update the standard so that it remained convenient even as the vernacular evolved!

I wonder if the Royal Society had any plans to create such an organization in the 17th century... ;)

There are plenty of institutions that do this already. Dictionaries, University English departments, other academic institutions. I don't see why having a single centralized office to do this would be better, especially with a language like English where it's spoken in so many different countries.

If the problem is that it's too standardized and inflexible, I don't see how adding a centralized bureaucracy around it will solve this problem.

We don't need any of that, we just have to stop making fun of people who spell things phonetically.

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