To the typical Anglophone, the French approach to managing French can seem absurdly authoritarian - how presumptuous to tell people how they should speak. But I do have some sympathy for the concept of a language authority. French does at least have a definition of what French is. I expect French to maintain cultural continuity for longer than English, which is so freewheeling and absorptive that it feels we are destined for schism and mutual incomprehension in the long run. In English, nobody can tell us that our usage is wrong, and we have no North Star guiding us along a shared linguistic journey.