Is Proper English Dying? And Should Us Care?

This Jeff Yang piece is in the October 29 Wall Street Journal.

If, as Laurie Anderson sang, language is a virus, then English is the common cold.
Already ubiquitous — English has an estimated 1.5 billion speakers — it’s only growing more so, given its status in fast-growing emerging markets. Especially the fastest-growing and emerging-est market of all, China, where it was estimated last year by the China Daily newspaper that up to 400 million people are currently actively learning English, or nearly a third of the population. (It’s this statistic that led Jon Huntsman, former Ambassador to China and soon-to-be-former GOP presidential candidate, to remark recently that in a few years, China will have more English-speakers than America.)

Read the entire article in the October 29 Wall Street Journal . . .