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David Crystal Quotes

English - Educator | July 6, 1941 -

Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.

Strength People Thinking Argument

Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as 'and' and 'what,' or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as 'hello.'

Focus Words Language Ignore Fall

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

Process Language Internet You More

The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past.

Past Language Internet New Been Set

There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there's a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there's a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.

You Lawyers Group Old Gang Own

A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread.

Spread English Global Different

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

Time Language Genres Kaleidoscope

Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language.

Best People Research Language You

People are very ready to criticize other people's accents. There's no correlation between accents and intelligence or accents and criminality, but people do make judgments.

Intelligence People Ready Accents

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries eventually reflect popular choices. And the Internet is allowing more people to influence spelling than ever before.

People Influence Choices Internet

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.

Death Language Person Kind Talk Who

You can say now, 'I dissed him' - to diss, I dissed him - or, 'Stop dissing her'. And that's the interesting thing, that it's the prefix that's become the verb! It's a most remarkable development.

Interesting You Stop Now Say Become

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