[retrac]

> If the official body represents the will of the people

As anyone who speaks French can tell you, the official body's prescriptions often have no relationship to the will of the people regarding how they actually use the language.

There's quite something to the polysynthetic view where modern French has a verb system with extensive clitics, but such an analysis devoid of appropriate genuflection to Latin gives les grammairiens anciens fits.

[cyphar]

Not to mention that many variants of French (Canadian French, Swiss French, Belgian French, and so on) would -- to my understanding -- not be considered by Académie Française to be "proper French" even though they are objectively French (mutually intelligible) and yet have deviated despite the formation of the Académie Française in the 1600s and its continued existence since the 1800s.

I don't see how the situation would be different with English (especially given that French was not as international in the 1600s as English is today -- so that ship has long since sailed). Not to mention that English spelling reforms have been tried many times in the past and rarely caught on within a single country let alone worldwide[1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_re...

[afiori]

French is well known* to be on the complete opposite spectrum in terms of speed of evolution or disposition to adopt new words/constructs.

Surely there is an happy middle ground.

* as most well known things without strong factual basis