Linguistic tyranny

I refer to the entertaining correspondence regarding the way in which spoken Cantonese should be written in the Roman alphabet.

Cantonese is not the only language which provokes such strong feelings, and Rupert Chan ('Birthday check', November 14) is in good company.

For Prince Charles, too, 'incorrect' language is seldom seen as just different.

There are further interesting linguistic parallels between the situation in England and China. In English, some supposedly correct forms have been invented and imposed through analogy with another language (Latin), leading for example to the 'rule' that 'This is I' should be used instead of 'This is me'.

Mr Chan's insistence that the Cantonese word for 'year' should be rendered as nin, not lin, despite the fact that no one pronounces it that way any more, suggests that the desire to impose rules is universal.

That such intervention invariably fails (even when practised at a state level, e.g. the Academie Francaise) is testimony both to the vitality of languages and the ineffectiveness of coercion.