Citas de Robert Burchfield

• The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.

  Robert Burchfield

  Communication, Editors, Monsters

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• American English is the greatest influence of English everywhere.

  Robert Burchfield

  Influence, American English

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• I am sure that the two main forms of English, American English and British English, separated geographically from the beginning and severed politically since 1776, are continuing to move apart, and that existing elements of linguistic dissimilarity between them will intensify as time goes on, notwithstanding the power of the cinema, TV, Time Magazine, and other two-way gluing and fuelling devices.

  Robert Burchfield

  Moving, Two, Cinema

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• To finish is both a relief and a release from an extraordinarily pleasant prison.

  Robert Burchfield

  Book, Reading, Relief

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• Vulgarity finds its antidote; old crudities become softened with time. Distinctions, both those that are useful and those that are burdensome, flourish and die, reflourish and die again.

  Robert Burchfield

  Distinction, Antidote, Vulgarity

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• Lexicography is a chastening as well as an illuminating and fascinating art.

  Robert Burchfield

  Art, Wells, Fascinating

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• Computer users soon learn that the miraculous powers of personal computers are based on avoidance of error.

  Robert Burchfield

  Errors, Computer, Miraculous

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• In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country.

  Robert Burchfield

  Madre, País, América

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• Creo que es imperativo ver la gramática inglesa moderna como un sistema lingüístico rico y diverso depositado en nuestras costas [las de Inglaterra] hace 1.500 años, y dejado con nosotros sin debilitar, aunque sustancialmente cambiado por los acontecimientos sociales y políticos del período intermedio.

  Robert Burchfield

  Believe, English Grammar, Years

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• El lenguaje del doctor Johnson y de la señora Hester Lynch Thrale, y el de sus contemporáneos adultos, era el lenguaje señorial de la época, pulido, elegante, poco ordinario, incluso en las páginas íntimas de sus diarios, y el régimen de instrucción era severo y práctico.

  Robert Burchfield

  Doctors, Adults, Diaries

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• At all periods of the [English] language it is difficult to assign a beginning date to most new words and meanings. They tend to slip into the language silently, and are placed in date order only when scholars subsequently get to work.

  Robert Burchfield

  Order, Language, Periods

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