> The King James Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and the works of John Milton are most often cited as the quintessential works in the English language. They were written around the time it is often said English was at the height of its development as a language.
>
> American English is more akin to the English found in these quintessential works than modern British English is.

Um... Do you have some particular examples in mind of how this is so?


> (I'm also told that the American accent is more similar to that spoken in Shakespeare's day, too, but I'm doubtful about how anyone would know.)

It's supposedly the regional accents spoken by folks in the Appalachians/the Ozark Mountains/West Virginia (take your pick) which are allegedly similar to Elizabethan English. I think this is more a folk myth based on some structural grammatical similarities of the mountain dialects to Shakespearean writing, rather than on an accent that actually sounds Elizabethan.


> Somewhere, you guys got lost, but because you're still occupying the British Isles and the "English" moniker, everyone mistakenly assumes your claim on the language is authoritative.

One of the reasons why we have the British vs. American English debate today is that there never HAS been any formal "authority" ever, who could speak for the shape and direction of the English language as a whole. All that English-speakers ever got were classical grammarians who tried to stuff the language into a structure more like Latin's, and so they forbid the use of split infinitives and the apparently unforgivable practise of beginning a sentence with a conjugation. But English, of course, is not Latin. :-)