I suspect that language wars used to start for reasons described by storyteller Garrison Keillor in his 1985 book "Lake Wobegon Days," in which he told of the frustration of immigrants to the U.S. who found themselves surrounded by people who don't speak the same native language. "You become a yokel ... an idiot," Keillor wrote, no matter how smart and insightful you might have been when you could speak in the language you know best.