Quotes About Dialects

The meter itself demands a special vocabulary, for many combinations of long and short syllables that are common in the spoken language cannot be admitted to the line Ã¢â'¬â€any word with three consecutive short syllables, for example, any word with one short syllable between two longs. This difficulty was met by choosing freely among the many variations of pronunciation and prosody afforded by Greek dialectal differences; the epic language is a mixture of dialects." - Bernard Knox

These tribes differed little from one another, either in appearance or in language. They spoke different dialects, which they could all understand if they chose. But they very rarely did. For, as is often the case, these close-related, neighbouring tribes were unable to get on with one another. They spent all their time exchanging insults and ridicule, when actually they were jealous of each other.

The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

The people of the coastal lowlands have their own languages, related to Hittite.

I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.

Italian has fewer words in common with Sardinian than it does with French. And the two languages look very different when written down. For example, the Italian proverb Il sangue non è acqua (the equivalent of "Blood is thicker than water") in Sardu becomes Su sambene no est abba. The overwhelming majority of Sardinians—about a million people—speak Sardu, which has three dialects of its own.

And all this reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...

My whole deal when I do accents or dialects is I gotta fool the locals. If I fool the locals then I've done my job.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Ever since third grade, I had a notebook and was putting together words just for fun. I liked different etymologies, different slang that came out in different eras. Different languages. Different dialects.

Regional dialects have to become national tongues before they can attain lasting glory. As with America, as with Australia. Scottish is different because Scotland considers itself to be a nation. Its language deserves a chapter to itself.

They called the Navajo language a "weird succession of guttural, nasal, tongue-twisting sounds Ã¢â'¬Â¦ we couldn't even transcribe it, much less crack it.

The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.

Modern biblical scholars have established that the Bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God, and it was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications, and non sequiturs.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy

I like playing with languages and dialects as we have so many in India. Adding a dialect just makes the dialogues more colorful.

I'm from Connecticut, and we don't have any dialects. Well, I don't think we have any dialects, and yeah, it's very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail.

Norfolk specializes in odd pronunciations. Hautbois is hobbiss, Wymondham is windum, Costessey is cozzy, Postwick is pozzik. People often ask why that is. I'm not sure, but I think it is just something that happens when you sleep with close relatives.

The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests... while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.

I do a lot of dialects in my act, including Irish, because I grew up in a neighbourhood that was predominantly Irish and Italian.

When I was doing theater for all those years in New York, I did a lot of classical theater, wearing big corsets and big dresses and doing dialects. It's interesting that once I moved to TV, I'm playing these scrappy, contemporary toughies.

When we started on 'Power,' I was committed to respecting the differences among Spanish dialects: Dominican, Nuyorican, Mexican, etc. I wanted the language our characters spoke to be as specific as possible, to reflect New York as it is.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.