from an article by Eric Kowal from Wordwizard • Members' articlesThe English language is, and always seems to have been, a perpetual battleground whose skirmishes take the form of controversies over usage and grammar....There has also never been a shortage of vociferous listeners to the BBC (the state-owned British broadcasting organization) complaining of its supposed failure to uphold standards of English usage - these standards presumably having been handed down from some mystical, mythical golden age of grammatical and vocabularian rectitude which often seem to be located in the decade of the complainer's childhood. Mix into this already-potent brew of linguistic controversy and personal prejudice the element of class rivalry described in Professor Alan Ross's notoriously provocative article of 1954, 'U and non-U', and it really starts to fizz!
