But not content with the undermining of English by its very spread, there are those who, keeping always in mind the lowest and not the highest and best use of English, want to simplify it, to simiplify the very things that make it so interesting.

Of course there are those who, out of a kind of despair, seek a solution to our problems in modifying or simplifying language, as if that were the problem. Consider how Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, a Polish Jew, allowed himself to believe that if only everyone could communicate using the same language, all kinds of problems would be solved. Hence Esperanto, or Volapuk, or a dozen other idealistic and misguided attempts.

And then there are those who do not take a proprietary interest in their own language, and think it swell that, for example, everyone and his brother learns to speak a debased but English-based creole, the Basic English of Ogden and Richards.

Now comes Simon Jenkins, who is never right about anything, and he wants to accept the Brave New World of semi-literacy, wants to simplify the spelling that contains so much (about, for example, not only etymologies and connections between words, but also about the laws of linguistc change, however grimly forbidding those laws may seem to some).

Of course he does. The Simon Jenkinses of this world like language to be simple. He likes a basic vocabulary of, say, 5000 words. He likes the modern system of education as vocational training.

And there are such people attempting to perform the same levelling of languages everywhere. Ten years ago, they tried to do it in France, and didn't succeed. But a glance at French websites and blogs and postings shows that the use of French in the land of the Perfected Civilization, the land that gave the world the Dictee, is not what we once thought it was. France itself must go on a different regime: a steady diet of Jules Ferry and Jules Isaac , with just a dash of Charles Du Bos.

As for the simplication, for all kinds of save-time-because-time-is-money reasons, of Chinese, of the comlexity of its ideograms, that movement should be stopped in its tracks. Horrifying. Sickening. World-wide protests must prevent the Chinese from going down this radix-malorum-cupiditas-est road.

And now that universities in the countries of Western Europe are proud to admit students from all the other members of the E.U., this means that in everything to do with language, in all literature courses, those that are the most advanced, the ones that study the subtlest effects and require the greatest native command of English, will suffer if in the course there are many non-native speakers. And outside the E.U., the problem can be seen in the mad desire of many universities in the West to be so-called "world class" (what an epithet) institutions whose student body will be composed of people from everywhere, who not only lack a native command of English, but may also arrive with a native command of a language wildly different in grammar and syntax and vocabulary from English. And all because the university's president and trustees want to boast of having what is now a University to the World (see, in this regard, as a monitory example, Harvard).

Stop the levelling and the simpliyfing and the effacing of national consciousnesses and borders. Make the possession of language, the kind of possession that entitles you to claim a hearing, more rather than less difficult. Make it more than a matter of multiple-choice questions and Basic English. Competitive and severe examinations, and all kinds of hurdles to discourage, as Flannery O'Connor once wrote, all those would-be writers and would-be pundits, who nowadays assume, just like the teenagers who are flunking out of eighth grade tell inquiring reporters that they plan to be astrophysicists, too many assume beyond their abilities, and confuse degrees with education. Help them to be more realistic. Help them to sit still.

Save the French language from those who would render it more phonetic. Save Chinese from those who would limit the complexity, or number, of ideograms to be taught. And above all, visitors to a site called New English Review should wish to save English from the simplifyers and the levellers. Nous voila en pleine Vendee.

ROFLMAO! :-)

And I only know that as a dim reflection of a relative's connection to that antebellum confection, the FFV.

I'm fairly relaxed about the way English is changing. Throughout history people equated language change with decay. "Dark riders of archaism", ie retired colonels, spluttered and harrumphed about our current use of "realise", which they insisted should only be used to mean "bring about". No doubt, at the time of the Germanic sound shift, older people grumbled about the "youth of today", with their voiceless fricatives and their loss of aspirations.

Language has always been used for lower-level activities by low-level people, interested in making a living or in bread and circuses. But until relatively recently such people couldn't write, or their low-level conversation was not recorded, giving a misleading impression of how high-minded our ancestors were.

Besides, low things can be fun. The Carry On Films are low-level entertainment, but my life would have been much poorer without them. Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!

And few things in life give greater pleasure than switching from one linguistic register to another, as I tried to do by acknowledging your erudite joke in the manner of a semi-literate teenager.

The play on high and low registers registers in French schoolbooks as play on soutenu and familier.

So here's my proposal:

I'm be familier if you'll be soutenue. And I'm willing to switch roles, too, if the neighbors aren't looking: you can be familiere, and I'll be soutenu.

In both cases this leads to a slightly disreputable result In the first, I become a souteneur. In the second, monsieur se fait entretenir. Perhaps now is the time for both of us to lie back, and think of France.