David Crystal Quotes

Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.

People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.

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

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say 'LOL.' Just what? But it means 'laugh.' Why don't you just laugh? What are you doing?

All languages had their birth, their apogee and decline.

Many Arabic/Islamic words have now entered the English dictionary, such as haj, hijab, Eid, etc., and I no longer need to put them in italics or explain them.

Speakers of English love to invent and reinvent the language.

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.

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.

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

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

In the future, things will truncate! No, in the age of Twitter, we can't be upset when words become shorter.

I am emoji-heavy as hell. I'd use the same emoji 140 times just to communicate how excited I am.

New words travel from one variety of English to another and at a rapidly increasing rate, thanks to the way language is exchanged today over e-mail, chat rooms, TV, etc.

Dominant and emerging forms of interpersonal communication have to find their way into literary language somehow - think of the epistolary novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.

With this 'social media,' instead of letters you get emails. They're all written in a hurry, with no punctuation, no paragraphs - it's one continual stream, with spelling mistakes. Quite frankly I think it's a world I don't need. But I have to read them all because people say, 'Did you get my letter?' And it's not even a letter!

Natural languages generally are not designed by humans, they're just designed by the participants and you say something new and somebody else says, "Oh, that's a cool way to say it," and the next thing you know, everyone is saying it because it's shiny.

Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

brb, ttyl ok? wow, i saved a 'ton' of time with those acronyms.