Here's my personal theory on changing language. I have come up with this theory/axiom on my own, and it holds no authority whatsoever. Just one guy talking out of his ass.

In days of yore (for lack of a more precise term), English changed on the whim of its speakers, creating large obstacles between speakers of what was ostensibly the same language. Over time, words changed due to the way they were pronounced. Over more time, the new pronunciations and, sometimes, spellings became the standard throughout the language based on where those words were used the most. For example, if ``boatswain'' referred to something that occurred on the polo field, as opposed to on the docks and in boats, it would likely still be pronounced ``boat-swane'' and not ``bow-sun''. This is all valid change in the realm of language evolution. However, we now have what should be a fairly static language, with the exceptions of new words. There aren't separate communities that have wildly different pronunications of the same words (except for some that have large variations in vowel pronunciation -- think Boston or Canada -- but these are largely consistent within themselves). All of the pronunciation changes that happen these days are because of people that simply don't know how the word should be pronounced, and make up pronunciations on their own, largely based on their spellings. This is in contrast to older changes where people were largely illiterate, and were simply imitating what they thought they heard other people say, like the childhood game where a group passes a phrase through a gauntlet of repeating children to see what comes out of the other end.

Now, I can't honestly say that the more recent version of change is more wrong than the older version. In reality, in my opinion, both are wrong. The language shouldn't change, because it creates a division between the old language and the new language, and between their speakers. But there's no way to do anything about the old changes. They've come and gone. But we can prevent new, arbitrary, changes from occurring.

As reference, I'd like to point out one of the oft () overlooked contributions of Martin Luther. He is usually remembered as the progenitor of the Protestant Revolution, as he was. But one of his earlier transgressions was to print a version of the Bible in German. Until he did so, it was only available in Latin, out of reach of the common German Christian, who had to rely on translations from the clergy, who he considered, rightly, in many cases, to be corrupt. (Think about the current theory that many radical Muslims might be that way because their interpretations of the Qu'ran are spoon-fed to them by radical clergymen, possibly incorrectly.) When he had it translated into German, anyone could read it. I realize that many (a majority?) of 16th century Germans were probably illiterate, but surely many more could read German than could read Latin. And those that could read could tell others outside the realm of the Catholic Church's authority. (I'm getting to a point -- honest.) While this early step in the Protestant Reformation was huge in that context alone, it was huge in another way, as well. In one fell swoop, he unified the German language. Almost everyone started to read that Bible, or listen to it being read. What had been a wild amalgam of starkly contrasting language suddenly became one again. And that force of a unified public was likely one of the forces that made the German Protestant Reformation a success.

So my point is that unifying a language serves to strengthen it, and its speakers. On a related note, I have no problem with local vernaculars, from Cajun pidgins to computer geek cants to even Ebonics, in their local contexts. But when those speakers lose recognition of the real language, and try to communicate with others outside their local group using that language, we've lost the fight. And, while this argument about pronouncing the `t' in ``often'' is hardly reason to lose sleep (despite the fact that I'm writing this diatribe at 4 in the morning), being less that vigilant is the first step in the wrong direction.