I am a -firm- believer in "freedom of language" which is the shirttail cousin of Freedom of Speech. This freedom affords us the liberty (catch the play on words?) of expressing our convictions, ideas, attitudes... any old way, without regard to formal rules that restrict our language liberty. The old rules of grammar and spelling attack the basic principle of our freedom of language, which is protected, believe it or not, by the Constitution, First Amendment, under Freedom of Speech.
The U.S. Embassy in Madrid sends me -at my request- an electronic Newsletter "Zoom in on the USA, a monthly publication of the USA Mission", put together to help those interested in the US and the English language. Unfortunately I always detect spelling mistakes -not typos- and grammatical and syntactical "faux pas". And as I am very naïve -and a bit foolish- I have pointed this out to them, to those who write it. To no avail, 'cause I guess that the composers have entrenched themselves behind the proposed "Freedom of Language Act", draft in the works by Congress to protect the ignorant, which -I am told- says: "Any government official is free to write the English language in any form and maner (sic) that his/her education, or lack of it, dictates. Thus spelling idiosyncracies, grammatical and syntactical deviations will not constitutte (sic) a transgression. No member of the Government or fereign (sic) service will ever be called to order for using broken English..." And so on and so forth.
If I were a pedant I would say: "O tempora, o mores!"
The Social Security Administration is elated by the news of the proposed Act as they are cut from the same cloth.
But perhaps this Freedom of Language Act -which is my idea and intended as a mild joke- may not be necessary: Common Law protects, aids and abets the new usage and peculiarities of expression.
This may be just a question of age, but I regret the new (?) language liberties and long for the old times... Oh, I believe in yesterday...
(NB. Let me add, just in case, that the Government of Spain is considering a "Real Decreto de Libertad del Idioma" to protect everybody.)
