David Crystal Quotes

There's nothing unusual about a single language dying. But what's going on today is extraordinary when we compare the situation to what has happened in the past. We're seeing languages dying out on a massive scale.

It's haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.

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.

There's a tremendous amount of language loss. Most of the attention is given to indigenous languages, which makes sense, but some of the most dramatic language loss is in Europe.

I do not share the wish to see my language dead and decently buried.

Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beasts.

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.

There were about 6,000 languages spoken on this planet at the beginning of the 20th century, there are probably only 600 still widely spoken at the beginning of the 21st century. Together with biodiversity, cultural and linguistic diversity are fading fast.

It is time for dead languages to be quiet.

We used to speak Irish - Gaelic Irish - around the dinner table, but over the years, we lost that.

A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.

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.

The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love.

Language is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples.

As our language wanes and dies, the golden legends of the far-off centuries fade and pass away. No one sees their influence upon culture; no one sees their educational power.

Most languages spoken by a few thousand people are so complicated they make your head swim; a Siberian yak herder's language is much more complicated than a Manhattan bond trader's.

The Hawaiian language needs to be studied globally as a language of life.

It's really sad for me that in the United States the Latino community is losing its culture and language, especially among kids born here - a lot of them can't even speak our language.

Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture.

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.

If you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they're all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can't talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.

According to the United Nations' latest count, of the approximately 3,000 languages spoken in the world today, only some 78 have a literature. Of those 78, a scant five or six enjoy a truly international audience.

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard.