David Crystal Quotes

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.

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.

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 changes very fast.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that's nonsense.

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.

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

Speakers of English love to invent and reinvent the language.

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

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.

New words can spread like wildfire thanks to social media - you only have to look at 'mansplaining' and 'milkshake duck' to see language evolution at work - so why not old ones too?

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

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

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

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

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

Verbing weirds language.

The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

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.

Changes in language often reflect the changing values of a culture.

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.

English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.