David Crystal quotes - page 2

Language may not determine the way we think, but it does influence the way we perceive and remember, and it affects the ease with which we perform mental tasks. (David Crystal)
The story of the English writing system is so intriguing, and the histories behind individual words so fascinating, that anyone who dares to treat spelling as an adventure will find the journey rewarding. View quote
David Crystal
For a language is really alive only as long as there is someone to speak it to. When you are the only one left, your knowledge of your language is like a repository, or archive, of your people's spoken linguistic past. If the language has never been written down, or recorded on tape-and there are still many which have not-it is all there is. But, unlike the normal idea of an archive, which continues to exist long after the archivist is dead, the moment the last speaker of an unwritten or unrecorded language dies, the archive disappears for ever. When a language dies which has never been recorded in some way, it is as if it has never been. View quote
David Crystal
During the later part of the 19th century, it was believed that a sound of change affected the whole of a language simultaneously: one sound system would smoothly develop into the next, and all words which contained a particular sound would be affected in the same way. View quote
David Crystal
A language is said to be dead when no one speaks it any more. It may continue to have existence in a recorded form, of course-traditionally in writing, more recently as part of a sound or video archive (and it does in a sense `live on' in this way) – but unless it has fluent speakers one would not talk of it as a `living language'. And as speakers cannot demonstrate their fluency if they have no one to talk to, a language is effectively dead when there is only one speaker left, with no member of the younger generation interested in learning it. But what do we say if there are two speakers left, or 20, or 200? How many speakers guarantee life for a language? View quote
David Crystal
There are the many daily examples of taboo speech, usually profanities or obscenities, that express such emotions as hatred, antagonism, frustration, and surprise. The most common utterances consist of single words or short phrases (though lengthy sequences may. View quote
David Crystal
The growth in linguistic awareness about the problem, and the emergence of an associated activism, was one of the most exciting developments of the 1990s. Although awareness is still poor among the general public, the issues are now being much more widely discussed at professional levels, in a variety of international, national, regional, and local contexts. At one extreme, there are major campaigns such as those involved in promulgating the Barcelona Declaration of Linguistic Rights, or such initiatives as the `Red Book on Endangered Languages' (part of the Tokyo Clearing House project). At the other extreme, there is lively debate taking place within many of the endangered communities themselves. Mechanisms and structures are now in place to channel energies. View quote
David Crystal
Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others. View quote
David Crystal
The aim of linguistics is to go beyond the study of individual languages to determine what the universal properties of language are, and to establish a ‘universal grammar' that would account for the range of linguistic variation that is humanly possible. View quote
David Crystal
The structural properties of the language are many and complex, but at least they are finite and fairly easy to identify: there are only so many sounds, letters, and grammatical constructions, and although there is a huge vocabulary, at least the units are determinate and manageable. View quote
David Crystal
We now know that linguistic change does not operate in such an across-the-board manner. Some speakers introduce the change into their speech before others; some use it more frequently and consistently than others; and some words are affected before others. A more accurate view is to think of a change gradually spreading through the words of a language – a view that is known as a lexical diffusion. At first just a few people use a change sporadically in a few words (commonly occurring words are influenced very quickly); then a large number of words are affected, with the sound gradually being used more consistently; then the majority of the words take up the change. (David Crystal)
Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you're (linguistically) dead. View quote
David Crystal
Language death is like no other form of disappearance. When people die, they leave signs of their presence in the world, in the form of their dwelling places, burial mounds, and artefacts - in a word, their archaeology. But spoken language leaves no archaeology. When a language dies, which has never been recorded, it is as if it has never been. View quote
David Crystal
A dictionary is a reference book that lists the words of one or more languages, usually in alphabetical order, along with information about their spelling, pronunciation, grammatical status, meaning, history, and use. View quote
David Crystal
Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly. View quote
David Crystal
Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument. View quote
David Crystal
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 be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project. View quote
David Crystal
You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time. View quote
David Crystal
Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as 'and' and 'what,' or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as 'hello.' View quote
David Crystal