Language is an astonishing capacity: the crown jewel in our mental and social arsenal. But for all that, one can't help noticing that it's sometimes a bit. rubbish. It's confusing and ambiguous. Some languages are beautiful but others, not so much. Even the good ones always seem to be going to the dogs. Words, as Eliot wrote, "slip, slide, perish/Decay with imprecision." And some of them are just foul to start with.

No wonder that quite a few people throughout history have had the idea of making improvements.Join the Economist's language columnist Lane Greene to meet the people who have sought to bring language itself closer to their own eccentric ideals. Can a language exist that is perfectly clear, logical and unambiguous? How about one in which no bad words exist? Could class distinctions or other political faultlines be made good? Could you preserve a language in aspic at its zenith of greatness so that no corruptions or vulgarisations ever creep in? Could we all speak the same? The answer in each case reveals another facet of the wild beast that is human speech and thought.