Introduction

Summary Although English might hold the record for the most described language in the world, there are still many things that we do not know about it. This introduction points to some of the reasons for this state of affairs, including the amount of variation there is within English, both in historical terms and in terms of the shape of the language in the twenty-first century. The chapter also covers matters such as how we know what English is like, and what a ‘grammar’ is. We conclude by pointing out why it is not always possible to give simple answers to apparently simple questions about language.