In recent years there have been suggestions that English could break up into mutually unintelligible languages, much as Latin once did. Could such a break-up occur, or are we in need of a new appreciation of the nature of World English?

A well-known British broadcaster and biographer of the Royal Family writes as President of the Queen's English Society about the need to defend the mother tongue in the mother country.

Received Pronunciation or BBC English has long been the prestige voice of British English and the model offered to foreigners learning the language. In recent years, however, RP has been in retreat, and a former professor of English – of Danish background – presents the case for protecting and preserving it.

A wide range of newsletters, clippings and cuttings, catalogues and correspondence arrives (and is welcomed) on ET's editorial desk. From the mass that goes into our files comes this mix of lost apostrophes, curious usage and abusage, and arcane expressions.

Popular journalism in Britain has a language all its own, shaped by the pressures of editorial deadlines and a perennial need for stereotyped characters performing in life's daily dramas

In ET8, October 1986, EAN TAYLOR wrote about arcane expressions used by banks and building societies in England. Now he considers the phraseology of British life insurance/assurance, its euphemisms and jargon, and would welcome information about parallel usages elsewhere.

To the making of wordbooks there is no end, and a recent addition to the long list is the Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary (1987), compiled by MARTIN H MANSER and NIGEL D TURTON (with a preface by DAVID CRYSTAL). Its publishers describe it as ‘a unique new dictionary which combines the elements of thesaurus, usage guide, lexicon and historical survey’. The PWD has 838 pages, and costs £4.95 in the UK, $12.95 in Canada, $16.95 in Australia, and $19.99 in New Zealand; there is no indication of how many words are covered. The three columns reproduced below show how the compilers have combined snappy, stripped-down definitions with boxed notes about usage and etymology. The PWD is an entertaining book, marred only by the quality of the paper used for the first edition.

The Oxford English Dictionary, already more than a century in the making, is currently being computerized and up-dated. One of James Murray's successors describes how the conversion to an electronic OED is being done.

In 1986, the International Journal of the Sociology of Language published a special issue on language rights and the proposed English Language Amendment to the US Constitution. A shorter version of the major article in that special issue appeared in ET6, April 86, as ‘An endangered language?’ by David F Marshall. A defender of the ELA exercises his right of reply.