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" There's nothing unusual about a single language dying. But what's going on today is extraordinary when we compare the situation to what has happened in the past. We're seeing languages dying out on a massive scale. "

David Crystal

Dying

Past

Today

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" Online, you show how brilliant you are by manipulating the language of the Internet. "

" It doesn't take a language long to disappear once the spirit to continue with it leaves its community. In fact, the speed of the decline has been one of the main findings of recent linguistic research. "

" One of the lesser-known ways of making new words is to form a blend - and a blend is when you run two words together to make a third word. "

" Enshrined in a language is the whole of a community's history and a large part of its cultural identity. The world is a mosaic of visions. To lose even one piece of this mosaic is a loss for all of us. "

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

" The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before. "

" A community, once it realises that its language is in danger, can get its act together and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. You've seen it happen in Australia with several Aboriginal languages. And it's happening in other countries, too. "

" 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. "

" English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach. "

" 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. "

" At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects. "

" 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. "

" Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. "

" Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it. "

David Crystal

Issues

Language

" 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. "

" One notable feature is that English doesn't have much of a system for expressing relative social status. "

" Increasingly, over the past ten years, I've come to take the view that a cultural perspective is intrinsic to the future of language teaching and learning, especially in the case of English, as it becomes increasingly global. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using. "

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

David Crystal

Evolving

Language

" 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. "

" A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Of all the mediums that influence language, I think film is the one that has the most effect. Not so much from the point of view of pronunciation and grammar. I don't think we pick up very many sounds and grammatical instructions from the films we see - but the catchphrases. "

" Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument. "