ABSTRACT
The above view on the state of English, expressed by the legendary printer, editor and translator who introduced printing in England in 1476 and had considerable influence on the emergence of a standard language, might just as well have been voiced by a contemporary observer of the language. The present-day observer might, for example, react to the sentence Everyone in the street was shocked when they heard the news, having learnt that everyone should be followed by he/she, or be utterly confused by the different vowel qualities in accents of English: the word pen, as pronounced by a New Zealander, is easily perceived as pin by British speakers.
