Countries that do have such "regulators", as you call them, aren't that much different from that, though. Most of the work these bodies do is just more professi

Countries that do have such "regulators", as you call them, aren't that much different from that, though. Most of the work these bodies do is just more professional approach to what you described. It's just observing how language changes and keeping a written record of it. Which is surely more comforting for a school teacher, I agree, but, damn, who cares. It really seems like a non-issue to me. And, I suspect, most school teachers feel like they have more important things in life to do, than keeping track of linguists keeping track of the language, even if it's implied that it's their job. Sure, I know some countries where these "regulators" perceive themselves as having an important political function: keeping (mostly dying) language "pure". But this really is pretty laughable, teenagers will still speak some kind of pidgin, borrowing half of vocabulary from some other language with larger (and more importantly, perceived as "cool") community. I've seen this happen a lot. Maybe this does slow down language transformation to some extent, but I really doubt it is significant on the historic scale. In fact, I strongly suspect that English is changing much slower today, just because of how much content there is in it. Other languages borrow more from English, than English does from other languages today.