THE MAJOR GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
"Grammar", says JosT Rubia Bacia (1973), "is not language; it is an explanation of language" (p. vi). The child acquires language through usage, grammar through formal learning. Grammar cannot be substituted for language; when one tries to do so, the result is "an abstraction that exists in vacuo. It has no reference" (p. vi).
Standard English is the acrolect of well-educated native speakers of English. Yet, English presents a large diversity of lects, Standard English being but one variety. Some linguists thus speak of "Englishes" (McArthur, 1992, p. 355). To what extent does British English differ from American, Australian, or South African English? Are these differences significant in terms of mutual comprehension in today's "global village"? Is it true that England and America are divided by a common language, and that every Englishman is an island? Or is it, rather, that much of the world is united by a common language... that sprouts its own buds and shoots here and there as an expression of nativism?
English speakers and writers cannot have recourse to an English language academy--as can the French and the Spaniards, for example. The academy of English is composed of all the people who speak English--of all flavors.
Castilian Spanish ("castellano" or "espa±ol")--the Standard Spanish, as it were--is the official language of Spain and of most Latin American nations. There is as wide a variety of "Spanishes", as there is of "Englishes", inasmuch as history and diaspora have marked literary expression as well as vernaculars, the "lenguas domTsticas" (G=mez Rea, 1983, p. 871). The Real Academia Espa±ola, in Madrid, is the authoritative reference for the "proper" Spanish language. There are Academias Correspondientes in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Panama, Cuba, Paraguay, Bolivia, Honduras, and Puerto Ri...