D.A. Wood,

You have made some valid points and have expressed opinions formulated from legitimate experiences. I'm not trying to attack you. I was making a comment on your statement based on statistics of English speaking populations and recognized dialects, and I was exaggerating the truth just as much as it seemed you had in that specific point.

I have met many Indians, several who speak better English as their second language than many North American born, first language English speakers, and that is neither more nor less valid than your experience.

I've seen no evidence to support the notion that the vast majority of any English speaking country's population speaks a standardized English, whether as their first language or otherwise. Communications and exposure have helped immensely in unifying dialect, but you don't have to drive very far to hear variations, and that doesn't mean the people who don't live in your state are wrong or uneducated, they've just accepted a slightly different regional standard.

We're all language lovers in this thread, I'm sure. Those who don't care probably wouldn't be here. I'm for proper English as we all are. But I recognize that absolute rigidity is not a reasonable or attainable goal. The standard must have room. English is not the same today as it was in some centuries old rule book, nor will it be, in years to come, the same as rules today. Dictionaries are revised, and language evolves. English has adopted many words from other languages, brought to it no doubt equally by speakers of broken English. Groups you may have dismissed a little too quickly brought us words like "grammar."

There is no reason for Americans to imitate British English.

Perhaps not. There are already huge differences, so why go back? But it's this room for growth and the acceptance of the regional standard that allowed this to happen in the first place. Otherwise, somewhere today, an American teacher would be adding a u in red ink to the word "color."

Although I otherwise agree with much of what you've stated.

"Just on a statistical basis, American English is far more important that any other kinds - which merely express minority views"

I realize you may not have tried to make that comment sound as ignorant as it does; it is true America is the country with the largest population of English speakers. The problem is that this statement presumes that America has one common dialect, a presumption which isn't even close to accurate. By that logic, one may conclude that India, the second largest population of English speakers, with about one fifth the number of dialects represented in the USA, is statistically "far more important" than "minority" US dialects.