Best quotes by David Crystal on Language

Checkout quotes by David Crystal on Language

• ‟ At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ The one thing about internet language, people join it, and what quickly evolves is an 'internet dialect,' as it were.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ We are rearing a generation of kids who are more equitable and more understanding about the existence of language variety and why it is there.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ What turns teenagers on more than the Internet these days? If you can get a language out there, the youngsters are much more likely to think it's cool.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Online, you show how brilliant you are by manipulating the language of the Internet.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ People say that text messaging is a new language and that people are filling texts with abbreviations - but when you actually analyse it, you find they're not.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ Of all the mediums that influence language, I think film is the one that has the most effect. Not so much from the point of view of pronunciation and grammar. I don't think we pick up very many sounds and grammatical instructions from the films we see - but the catchphrases.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach.

  - David Crystal
  

• ‟ A community, once it realises that its language is in danger, can get its act together and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. You've seen it happen in Australia with several Aboriginal languages. And it's happening in other countries, too.

  - David Crystal