David Crystal Quotes

I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power.

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

The story of English spelling is the story of thousands of people - some well-known, most totally unknown - who left a permanent linguistic fingerprint on our orthography.

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

Language changes very fast.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

There's something strange about theater. My characters consistently demonize elitism, but of course it's taking place in a theater where only so many people can see it. I've been in silly popcorn movies - the kind of thing that as an actor you might feel embarrassed about - but those movies reach many more people.

Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.

Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.

It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.

People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time.

If someone does something in an entertainment/pop ambience, that person becomes someone who has an impact on the conduct and attitude of a huge number of people who peripherally come in contact with them.

People learn English from 'Full House.' Candace's husband, Valeri Bure, he learned to speak English watching it... 'Aw, nuts.' 'You got it, dude.'

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.

We've shown the entertainment industry what social media is capable of doing for a movie. 'Sharknado' is now a noun.

Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.

As films are a mass medium, if more people love your work, it is better.

For me as an artist, pop culture has so much power and influences society on a regular basis - I see it in the kids; I see it in everyone that I encounter. Everyone is influenced by pop culture whether we want to be or not.

The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors of the language when in fact our job is not to put a lid on it.

One of the joys of language is its constant evolution, and a lexicographer's job is both to track new words and to reassess those from the past.

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