Who owns English?
Three of the lines here are the same argument at different dates. Webster in 1789 wants America to have its own standard; Wilde in 1887 jokes that Britain and America share everything except the language; Twain in 1897 says the Queen's English has passed to a company in which Americans hold most of the shares. The question has never been settled, because English keeps spreading to new speakers. The language belongs, in practice, to whoever is using it.
Fix it, or let it change?
Johnson's preface hopes to slow the “degeneration” of English, and in the same pages accepts that a dictionary cannot stop a living language changing. Chaucer had already noticed, four centuries earlier, that speech changes within a thousand years. Orwell's worry was different: not change, but phrases used without thought. Between them they set out most of the arguments people still have about English.
What is a good quote about the English language?
Samuel Johnson's “words are the daughters of earth, and things are the sons of heaven” (1755), Mark Twain's line that “the Queen's English” has passed to a joint stock company (1897), and Orwell's “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (1946) are three of the best, and all are traced to their sources.
Who said Britain and America have everything in common except language?
Oscar Wilde, in The Canterville Ghost (1887): “we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” A similar line about two countries “separated by a common language” is usually credited to George Bernard Shaw; Quote Investigator found it credited to him in 1942, but not in his writings.
What are Orwell's rules for writing English?
Six rules at the end of “Politics and the English Language” (1946), including “Never use a long word where a short one will do” and, last, to break any of them sooner than say anything outright barbarous.