The most comprehensive dictionary for English is the Oxford English Dictionary. It is the oldest continuously published dictionary of the language. The printed unabridged edition is about 20 large volumes, covering more than 500,000 words. It is

"Standard" and "non-standard" dialects/languages are each complete systems and equally complex with their own rules of syntax, morphology etc. There is no correlation between intelligence and the language faculty. Whilst

I think everybody code-switches to some degree, as long as there is some sort of reason to do so in their society. It doesn't mean they use two dialects just as a bilingual uses two languages, because people often respond to dialect as if it

Good day! Hi there! i just would like to know if Lingustics can be used as a tool for everyday's conversations, public speaking and many more; how does it benefit us and what are its effects to us. Thankyou. I just would like to sahre

My high school Chinese teacher asked me to help her translate these two abstracts from Chinese into English. I have finished, but I need to correct them into better English. Please help me. I have to give my teacher the translation. She helped me

MrPedantic wrote: What are we to make of the fact that adult native speakers often "self-prescriptivise"? Example: "Oh, hello, MrP. MissQ was just telling Randy and me – Randy and I – about L1 acquisition." MrP I read your

'If prescriptivism is unnecessary in L1 acquisition, then dictionaries will only exist for L2 speakers, which isn't the case.' Your deduction appears to me fallacious. Using dictionaries do not necessarily mean the chap is prescribing a

This inspires a more general question (and thus a change ... dictionaries claim that they are variants of the same word. "Thy" and "thigh". "Either" and "ether". Those are the canonical two pairs that you

If you're not sure, you shouldn't make such sweeping statements. It doesn't matter whether the words are bisyllabic or not ... your point here. Plus, there are many dialects of BrE: are you sure you can speak for all of them? No. Huh?

There are two useful features of current English spelling which a reform would lose, and which I think are worth ... understand unusual or novel words. The second is that changing spelling would make the writing of past centuries less accessible.