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" There is no such thing as an ugly accent, like there's no such thing as an ugly flower. "
David Crystal
Thing
Accent
Flower
Related Quotes:
" The one thing about internet language, people join it, and what quickly evolves is an 'internet dialect,' as it were. "
David Crystal
About
People
Join
" At the same time we overlap, because, I do linguistics, and Ben did a first degree in Linguistics at Lancaster University, so he knows some of my subject. "
David Crystal
First
Degree
Same
" How do you spell the name of the Irish prime minister? It sounds like 'teeshuck', but we spell it 'taoiseach.' We respect foreign spellings these days - a sign of our more egalitarian times, perhaps. "
David Crystal
Irish
Name
Respect
" Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster. "
David Crystal
Language
Texting
New
" 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.' "
David Crystal
Focus
Ignore
Language
" At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects. "
David Crystal
Kaleidoscope
Time
Language
" 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
Universal
Who
Way
" Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using. "
David Crystal
Well
Matter
Vocabulary
" 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. "
David Crystal
Story
Permanent
Left
" People are very ready to criticize other people's accents. There's no correlation between accents and intelligence or accents and criminality, but people do make judgments. "
David Crystal
Intelligence
Other
Make
" Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. "
David Crystal
Enjoy
Rules
Need
" English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach. "
David Crystal
Reach
History
Other
" One of the places the full stop is really being revised in a really fundamental way is on the Internet. You look at the Internet or any instant messaging exchange - anything that is a fast dialogue taking place. People simply do not put full stops in unless they want to make a point. "
David Crystal
People
You
Look
" Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next. "
David Crystal
Writing
Generation
Language
" Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language. "
David Crystal
Devil
Thought
Technology
" Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language. "
David Crystal
Control
Focus
People
" 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. "
David Crystal
You
Time
Talk
" It hasn't been a problem with Ben, I think we worked together very well, we don't have rows. "
David Crystal
Think
Problem
Been
" Bilingualism lets you have your cake and eat it. The new language opens the doors to the best jobs in society; the old language allows you to keep your sense of 'who you are.' It preserves your identity. With two languages, you have the best of both worlds. "
David Crystal
Society
Language
Identity
" People say that text messaging is a new language and that people are filling texts with abbreviations - but when you actually analyse it, you find they're not. "
David Crystal
People
New
Language
" Over the last 50 years or so, we have seen an increasing cultural diversification across the country. Accents are a reflection of society, and as society changes, so accents change. "
David Crystal
Society
Change
Changes
" You can say now, 'I dissed him' - to diss, I dissed him - or, 'Stop dissing her'. And that's the interesting thing, that it's the prefix that's become the verb! It's a most remarkable development. "
David Crystal
You
Development
Interesting
" What turns teenagers on more than the Internet these days? If you can get a language out there, the youngsters are much more likely to think it's cool. "
David Crystal
Internet
Language
Think
" One notable feature is that English doesn't have much of a system for expressing relative social status. "
David Crystal
Much
Expressing
System
" Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries eventually reflect popular choices. And the Internet is allowing more people to influence spelling than ever before. "
David Crystal
Influence
Internet
People
" English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. "
David Crystal
History
Renaissance
Meeting
" The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies. "
David Crystal
Who
Death
Language
" 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 - they form part of the linguistic color of a period. "
David Crystal
Identity
Desire
Comeback
" It's very difficult to find even one or two criteria that you will find in every Internet situation, and the reason is that the technology constrains language in individual ways. "
David Crystal
Language
You
Two
" In Cardiff, I've heard a number of accent mixes that weren't previously heard before such as Cardiff-Arabic and Cardiff-Hindi. This pattern is repeating itself in many urban communities across the U.K.; people are especially keen to develop a strong sense of local identity. "
David Crystal
Identity
Sense
People