The Queen's English

Check out Giles Harvey's post on the New Yorker's Book Bench about the difference between British and American English and the way we treat the speakers of each. As Harvey points out, people are often quick to dismiss certain evolutions of language as slang or impure, when really it just shows how language use changes over time. Which is why literature has changed so drastically from Shakespeare's day, and why we celebrate this fact with indie magazines and small presses. What's the fun of language if you can't experiment with it?