- When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney swapped some S's for Zs in a federal budget docum it wasn't the first time a politician was called out for poor spelling.

He joined the ranks of former US Vice President Dan and former UK Prime Minister Ris in making a memorable spelling g But instead of being roasted in late-night monologues or social media posts, Mark Carney got an open letter from language experts telling him he was undermining the Canadian identity.

Carney, who worked in th United Kingdom for many years, was using the British spelling o like utilise and emphasise.

The letter admonished Carney and the Canadian government to return to using standard Canadian English.

But if a leader of a country doesn't set the standard for that country's language, who does make the rules?

Is there some secret society with capes and swords making official decision about the language we all use?

Well, in some cases, literally y So let's talk about how they actually standardize language and why they want to regulate it I'm Dr.

Erica Brozovsky, and this is Otherwords.

(soft instrumental music) - [Animated Lips] Otherwords.

- If you're an American English the idea of an official government institution making rules and regulations around language seems a little weird.

Imagine if along with the IRS an there was the Office of Elocutio telling you not to use that new you picked up from an internet m But for many languages around th there are formal institutions that try to regulate language from word choice to grammar to, yes, even spelling.

So what are these language regulators trying to do?

Well, if you ask the notoriously stodgy Académie Française, their mission is to defend the French language and make it pure, eloquent, and capable of dealing with the arts and sciences.

And pure is a pretty loaded word The Académie Française is an exclusive group of 40 notable literary figures and scholars in France.

The average age of their members is in the 70s, and they have some old-fashioned tendencies to match.

The Academy is known for being r to incorporating loanwords from other languages into French.

So part of their work is coming up with French equivalents when new words are needed.

Instead of email, which Dutch speakers call 'emailen' and Urdu speakers call 'ai mel,' the Académie Français recommends the word 'courriel.'

But these top-down pronouncement aren't always successful.

While the authorities insisted that wireless internet is called "L'accès sans fil à l'Internet," most French people just say "le Many language regulators are trying to navigate the challenge of standardizing and modernizing language at the The Iceland's Personal Names Committee, for example, regulates an official list of ba that can be used in Iceland.

While new names can be added, the committee tries to standardize them to spellings that use only the Icelandic alph The name Cara might be standardized as Kara, because Icelandic doesn't include the letter C. But as people immigrate to Icela bringing with them traditional n from their home countries, the personal names committee has had to become a bit more flexible.

And some legislators have propos dissolving the naming committee for being too restrictive.

But the purpose of language standardization isn't always to prevent a language from changing.

After the Ho-Chunk people in Wis underwent decades of forced assi in English-only boarding schools their language was in danger of disappearing.

The nation estimates that there are only about 40 native speakers living today.

So with the goal of revitalizing as a living language, the Ho-Chunk Nation established a governmental language division That organization recorded elder and created an online dictionary featuring recordings of native s pronouncing Ho-Chunk words.

They developed curriculum for cl that can be taken either through an app or in area schools and even established an immersion daycare center to introduce the language to a new generation.

These efforts to save Ho-Chunk r the more urgent end of the missi that many language regulators sh to protect a language and promot in order to preserve all the his culture, and identity encoded wi But what happens when a language isn't regulated?

Despite being spoken by 1.5 billion people around the English has no formal regulating body to pooh-pooh, prime ministers, or announce formal translations of gamer slang.

But there are plenty of organiza that standardize the language on a smaller scale.

If you're a journalist, you may refer to the Associated Press Stylebook, which tries to standardize spelling, grammar, and even conventions on how to refer to certain subjects across news media, which can influence how consumers of that media use language themselves.

Or if you're trying to understan how the language has changed ove you could look at the Oxford English Dictionary, which tracks the history of English words and their usage going back as far as the 11th ce giving it some serious institutional clout.

Still, none of these arbiters of have the power of a full-on government body.

They just might look and feel like regulators of language to the people who speak it, because no matter whether language regulator's goal is to keep new words out or let new speakers in, they use some of these same tool to make their pronouncements sti Many of these regulatory agencie like the Royal Spanish Academy or the Mori Language Commission of New Zealand produce official dictionaries of the languages in their charge.

These can be prescriptive in that they put forth standard and definitions for words that we might refer to if we're trying to use the language correctly.

But these dictionaries ca also be beautifully descriptive because they create regularly updated snapshots of the words we use and how we u at a particular moment in time.

Language regulators can also influence school curriculums and evaluation standards.

They can reward certain language with academic success, as we saw with the Ho-Chunk Nation, or stigmatize language patterns as incorrect or unprofessional, as we saw in the US lawmakers who once sought to discourage Ho-Chunk's use.

They can, like the Académie Française or Editors Canada, write open letters or issue pres to try to persuade language user or they can influence how langua in government documents.

The Iceland's Personal Names Committee, for example, has a history of rejecting passports for those whose names don't conform to standardized spelling.

Whereas the New York City govern requires documents like public a and school registration forms to be available in 10 languages, from Arabic to Bengali to Haitia to promote the use of a broad range of languages in civic life.

And these tools can do a lot to shape how everyday people use Heck, not even the Prime Minister of Canada can switch up his spelling without facing outside pressure But as linguists know, language is a wily thing that changes a little bit every time it passes from person to person.

So prescribing language can only go so far.

At their best, language regulators help us communicate better by, say, standardizing spelling.

But they also give language room as they catalog and describe language as we use it in all its quirky, evolving glor