Everybody wants to say who they are and where they're from. And the easiest and cheapest and most universal way of doing… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread. — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible. — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving. — David Crystal Evolving Copy Share Image
Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster. — David Crystal Dimensions Copy Share Image
It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of… — David Crystal Language Copy Share Image
“Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you’re (linguistically) dead.” — David Crystal Humor Copy Share Image
Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
It doesn't take a language long to disappear once the spirit to continue with it leaves its community. In fact, the speed… — David Crystal Community Copy Share Image
'Spell it Out' rose to be number 4 on the best-selling Amazon chart - ahead of 'Fifty Shades of Grey!' Who ever… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which… — David Crystal Generation Copy Share Image
Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they're used by hundreds… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
When we look at the specific effect of the Internet on language, languages asking the question, 'Has English become a different language… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Increasingly, over the past ten years, I've come to take the view that a cultural perspective is intrinsic to the future of… — David Crystal Education Copy Share Image
The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the… — David Crystal Death Copy Share Image
“People sometimes say: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' That's true. But language is never far away. To talk about the… — David Crystal Language Copy Share Image
You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive… — David Crystal Change Copy Share Image
Research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you… — David Crystal Kids Copy Share Image
“There is little scientific data on the point, but evidently people do speak to themselves.” — David Crystal Science Copy Share Image
The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before. — David Crystal Chance Copy Share Image
Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Grammar is what gives sense to language … sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And… — David Crystal Giving Copy Share Image
Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language,… — David Crystal Book Copy Share Image
The Internet has given us 10 or 15 new styles of communication: long messages like blogging, and then short messages like texting… — David Crystal Communication Copy Share Image
Of all the mediums that influence language, I think film is the one that has the most effect. Not so much from… — David Crystal Cinema Copy Share Image
I don't have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is… — David Crystal Comeback Copy Share Image
Bilingualism lets you have your cake and eat it. The new language opens the doors to the best jobs in society; the… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Over the last 50 years or so, we have seen an increasing cultural diversification across the country. Accents are a reflection of… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes,… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
One of the places the full stop is really being revised in a really fundamental way is on the Internet. You look… — David Crystal Communication Copy Share Image
The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather… — David Crystal Language Copy Share Image
How do you spell the name of the Irish prime minister? It sounds like 'teeshuck', but we spell it 'taoiseach.' We respect… — David Crystal Irish Copy Share Image
There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
In Cardiff, I've heard a number of accent mixes that weren't previously heard before such as Cardiff-Arabic and Cardiff-Hindi. This pattern is… — David Crystal Identity Copy Share Image
The ethos of 50 years ago was that there was one kind of English that was right and everything else was wrong;… — David Crystal Ethos Copy Share Image
It's very difficult to find even one or two criteria that you will find in every Internet situation, and the reason is… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
