Interpreters & translators │ Sheila Wilkin │ Fiona Evans Wilkin
There is no such thing as a Royal Academy of English. The closest thing to a central authority on the language would be dictionaries and grammar books, but these report how words are used – not how they should be used. So does English need a Royal Academy like the Real Academia Española?
Real Academia Española (RAE)
The Real Academia Española, founded in 1713, comes out with a publication every year so that everyone knows which words are officially accepted as part of the Spanish language. As well as publishing dictionaries, the RAE functions as one of the most influential regulators of the Spanish language worldwide. It does this work in collaboration with the other 21 national academies that belong to the Association of Spanish Language Academies.
French and Italian
It isn’t just the Spanish language that has a governing language body. Many other languages have one, including Italian (the Accademia della Crusca, created in 1582) and French (the Académie Française, which dates back to 1635). These groups meet every year with a representative from each country where that language is spoken.
Does English need a Royal Academy?
In 2010 the Queen’s English Society announced that it had formed an Academy of English, a language reference website. The founder of the academy was quoted as saying: “At the moment, anything goes. Let’s set down a clear standard of what is good, correct, proper English. Let’s have a body to sit in judgment.”
Reactions were mixed, however. Some welcomed the effort, as being “long overdue. […] English has been left to fend for itself at a time when it is under unprecedented attack” (Gerald Warner, Daily Telegraph, Education, 8 June 2010).
Others, such as David Mitchell, writing in The Observer (13 June 2010), expressed different views. “By what authority would they sit in judgment? Where is their evidence that manacling our language to past usage is at all helpful or necessary?”
Language is dynamic
Not having a regulatory body allows English to be dynamic, growing and evolving naturally. Since in any case it’s a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, Greek and many other languages, regulation would simply suffocate its development and flexibility.
Different assumptions
In English the assumption is that differences will get worked out by users of the language and that dictionaries, style guides and grammar books will reflect conventional usage. For Spanish and many other languages it is considered necessary to have a central regulatory body to dictate usage such as acceptability of words, spelling and grammar.
