Correct Pronunciation

[calvin]

As you pointed out above, a language is a lot more related to how the bulk of its speakers use it than it is to official national rules for its use. So, there were always some people using the same word in different ways, or spelling the same word differently.

Yes after all this, that's really my point.

Some languages, or countries, have official bodies that set the standards - such as de Nederlandse Taalunie for Dutch in the Netherlands and Belgium, which I’m sure you know well. I’m pretty sure that their standards are taught in the schools and used by, for example, news organisations, but how closely does spoken Dutch follow their standards? [Or, first of all, do they set standards for pronunciaton or only grammar and spelling?] How different is spoken Dutch in Belgium from Dutch in the Netherlands, for example - is it just a different accent or quite different pronunciations?

The English language doesn’t have anything like this, not even just for the UK or US [don’t know about Canada, Australia, ...]. One usually refers to a source, such as a certain dictionary or grammar book, or perhaps an organisation such as the BBC that sets its own guidelines, as here:

In UK, the BBC has decided in its arrogant wisdom the plural of certain latin words adopted directly into English that end in "um" shall no longer end in "a" but in "s"

So in many cases, there is not just one “correct” way of spelling/pronouncing a word, different versions can be considered correct [if only regionally] or at least acceptable. As we see with “to spell”, we can even have a verb that is accepted as both regular and irregular [it can be either in the UK, but it’s only regular in the US]. I’m not sure if they always use it this way, but here’s one example I found immediately where the BBC uses it as a regular verb:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-56563610

Additionally, the language is always changing. In many cases, changes which became standard were considered incorrect when they first appeared, but people continued with the usage despite that and they caught on more widely.

Of course, as you wrote above, some things are just wrong - for example confusing “to”, “too”, and “two”.