Polish has developed unimpeded; someone put their foot out and tripped English. The human grammar is a fecund weed, like grass. Languages like English, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese are mowed lawns, indicative of an interruption...

[I] would argue that native-born blacks are so vastly less “African” than actual Africans that calling ourselves ‘African American’ is not only illogical but almost disrespectful to African immigrants. Here are people who were born...

The difference between educated people and uneducated people is that educated people have been opened up to the notion that you can disagree without fighting; whereas uneducated people, in conversation, seek to always agree–everybody agrees...

Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of...