You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather ordinary or formal thing - they don't usually mix - but 'gobsmacked' is a perfect exception to that… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Everybody wants to say who they are and where they're from. And the easiest and cheapest and most universal way of doing that is through their accent. — David Crystal 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 their identity… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
In effect we are, bending and breaking the rules of the language. And if someone were to ask why we do it, the answer… — David Crystal 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 is that… — David Crystal 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 death of… — 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 at the… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly. — David Crystal Copy Share Image
We are rearing a generation of kids who are more equitable and more understanding about the existence of language variety and why it is… — 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
It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
“Here are three elements we often see in town names: If a town ends in “-by”, it was originally a farmstead or a small… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
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… — David Crystal Copy Share Image
