English - Educator | July 6, 1941 -
It's very difficult to find even one or two criteria that you will find in every Internet situation, and the reason is that the technology constrains language in individual ways.
David Crystal
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Enshrined in a language is the whole of a community's history and a large part of its cultural identity. The world is a mosaic of visions. To lose even one piece of this mosaic is a loss for all of us.
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Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible.
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When we look at the specific effect of the Internet on language, languages asking the question, 'Has English become a different language as a result of the Internet?' the answer has to be no.
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English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach.
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I don't have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is their identity - they form part of the linguistic color of a period.
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Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they're used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so of the world's languages aren't in such a healthy state.
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The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before.
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Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood.
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Over the last 50 years or so, we have seen an increasing cultural diversification across the country. Accents are a reflection of society, and as society changes, so accents change.
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How do you spell the name of the Irish prime minister? It sounds like 'teeshuck', but we spell it 'taoiseach.' We respect foreign spellings these days - a sign of our more egalitarian times, perhaps.
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Bilingualism lets you have your cake and eat it. The new language opens the doors to the best jobs in society; the old language allows you to keep your sense of 'who you are.' It preserves your identity. With two languages, you have the best of both worlds.
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