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

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 b….

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 Fr….

Grammar is what gives sense to language .... sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And the busine….

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you ….

Research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to man….

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

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

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

Swearing makes an excellent relief mechanism.

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

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..

Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible..

The internet is an amazing medium for languages..

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

In effect we are, bending and breaking the rules of the language. And if someone were to ask why we do it, the answer is simply: for fun.

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

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

The story of English spelling is the story of thousands of people - some well-known, most totally unknown - who left a permanent linguistic fingerpri….

Several of us linguists at that time would record our own kids, just to get some data. There was some literature on it then, but no day-by-day, blow-….

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….