> English also doesn't have a central gatekeeping authority to maintain the "purity" of the language -- it's more decentralized and driven by popular consensus

> English also doesn't have a central gatekeeping authority to maintain the "purity" of the language -- it's more decentralized and driven by popular consensus (more or less -- there are still rules). Neither does German. If you refer to the "Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung", this is as the name implies just a transnational organisation from the German speaking countries to keep the orthography (somewhat) consistent. Which is something that English is dearly missing. A consistent orthography actually helps language learners a lot. This is one of the few points where English sucks as a lingua franca. If you think about the "Duden" dictionary, this is also not true. The Duden has always been a descriptive dictionary, not a normative one. There is no organization in German on the level of the Académie française. There are some small private clubs fighting for the "purity" of the language (which of course is ridiculous for a language with so many imported Latin/Greek/French and now English words) but nothing with enough authority to dictate the evolution of the living language.