It’s 2026. Why are we still speaking ‘English’?

Washington Post -  The idea of Americanized English dates at least to the Founders’ generation. In a lengthy 1789 linguistic dissertation, Noah Webster, the godfather of the American dictionary, wrote that “as an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government.” He added that “Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard. … It must be considered further, that the English is the common root or stock from which our national language will be derived.”

In 1919, the essayist H.L. Mencken published an erudite tome titled “The American Language,” arguing that our version of English had matured into a distinctive one that “shows its character in a constant experimentation.”