The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before.
David CrystalRead
Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Language evolves over time, and every unique usage reveals insights into this evolution.
David Crystal expresses his fascination with the diverse and unconventional ways language is used. He believes that each instance of unique or nonstandard language offers important clues about the progress and changes in linguistic expression, reflecting how society and culture influence communication.
Themes
LanguageEvolutionUsageCommunicationFascination
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about linguistic dynamics, one might say, 'As David Crystal noted, every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me.'
More from David Crystal
All quotes βThe 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.
David CrystalRead
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 CrystalRead
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 are and what society is like.
David CrystalRead
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.
David CrystalRead
Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, 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 manipulate language.
David CrystalRead
Similar quotes
We have to have a combination of general relativity that describes the warping of space and time, and quantum physics, which describes the uncertainties in that warping and how they change.
Kip ThorneRead
There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes
Joseph FourierRead
One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.
Michio KakuRead
Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.
Jacob BronowskiRead
I don't have an issue with what you do in the church, but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they've got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. Because that's when we're going to fight.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
You stop planetary exploration, those people who do that extraordinary work are going to have to go do something else.
Bill NyeRead