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Sometimes we keep standards for a very long time because they're really effective. Written English is one such example.

• brudgers 13y ago
  Poiesis does not require standards. Shakespeare is from the age before standardized English and "Poiesis" fails my browser's spell check. It's not just e e cummings and Ginsberg's howlings. The obsession over standardized spelling in particular is an accident of the English language. There aren't spelling bees in German or French because phonetics is the important point of reference in ordinary human language. The standards of English language are useful but for matters of taste and social differentiation not communication, e.g. the tenses of "read" which is about as important as a word can get in the context of written communication.
  • MaysonL 13y ago
    There aren't spelling bees in France, but there are dictation competitions, graded on spelling, punctuation, and accents [grave, acute, etc]. And the French (at least the Academy) are notoriously sticklers for the purity of the language.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • EliRivers 13y ago
    "The standards of English language are useful but for matters of taste and social differentiation not communication" There are people living in the same country as me, speaking the same language, less than 200 miles away, whom I struggle to understand in conversation. We spell and write the same way, so we can communicate through the written word. If we relied on phonetics to be able to communicate, we wouldn't be able to. Having standards means we can communicate; I suppose what I'm saying is that I just plain think the statement above is wrong, based on my own personal experience.