Ravi Zacharias Quotes

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

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

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

The ways in which language changes never ceases to interest me.

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.

Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising.

Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence.

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.

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.

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

It's no big deal about how you get language to evolve. You cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent things to each other.

... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.

Will America be the death of English? I'm glad I asked me that. My well-thought-out mature judgment is that it will.

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.

As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.

Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue.

You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back.

A new language always reflects a new point of view, and the gradual unconscious popularization of new words, or of old words used in new ways, is a sure sign of a profound change in people's articulation of the world.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.

I definitely do see language serving its users, and when it no longer serves them we need to look for new words.

The culture cannot evolve faster than the language. The language is the flashlight that shows the path.

If words are to change their meanings, as assuredly they are, let each user of language make such changes as please himself, put up his own suggestions, and let the best win.