Quotes About Language

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

Everyone tells me I have a funny accent. It's because I copy people. I learned English at school but have best friends who are French, Australian, English and American; a very weird mix.

I try not to invent; I try simply to translate the weird language of the natural world. And I'm not into absolute ownership of things.

I was that weird eight-year-old who was really interested in Shakespeare and understood it and appreciated the language.

The problem with depicting what's weird and what isn't is that it's got to this point of near total oversaturation. There's definitely a threshold at which that language and experience becomes tedious. How can something be weird if everything is apparently weird?

I've spent so much time with iambic pentameter that I can now recognize it when I hear it in conversation or a movie - it's like a weird, useless superpower.

By reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow.

It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count.

You know, funny is this weird word for me. I hear is so many times it has no meaning anymore.

My accent's become a weird hybrid.

Nobody knows what self-radicalized means, and that's one of the weird things about the way that we talk about terrorism. We talk about radicalization as though it were a thing, as though you could sort of track it and identify it, and that's not the case.

What I love about comedy is that we're this group of weirdos, and the only language that matters is, 'Are you funny?' And it really is this oddly cool American idea where comedy's the marketplace of ideas. May the best idea win.

Art should not be bound by barriers or language. The Hindi film industry is a testament to that. We speak only Hindi, but we premiere in Germany and Japan. Our films do phenomenally well there. We transcend the barriers of language and culture. We welcome you in. I think that's what art should be, and I hope America reaches that place.

Our Japanese fans don't speak English primary. They'll translate a sentence before coming and say something like, 'Thank you for coming to our country.' It's like, you're welcome. Thanks for coming to our show!

One of my best friends growing up was Vietnamese, and he and his mom would teach me how to say certain things so I could impress my nail girls. Then the nail girls would teach me how to count to 100 and basic things like 'Thank you' and 'You're welcome.' It's funny, because any accent that I do now always turns into Vietnamese.

I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.

I'm not from a milieu where high-register language or philosophical ideas were welcome.

As a child, it was really hard because I'd be thrown into a new school and have to make new friends, or I'd sit in class for months without speaking the language, but as I got older, I welcomed the possibility of discovering new cultures and languages.

For someone who has no connect with Tamil Nadu, the language or the film industry and to be welcomed by some amazing names purely for my talent feels really great.

When I arrived in the U.S., I knew little English and didn't have any friends. The neighborhood and school kids were so welcoming. They made me feel at home very quickly.

Little things like that when you go to another country is so welcoming. You meet someone, they're so jolly, they speak the language, it really helps.

Presidents Reagan and the first George Bush never used the vile language of some Trump supporters, but both blamed scarce resources and decaying communities on 'welfare queens' and black criminals like Willie Horton.

A nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.

I was born deaf. I was raised in a hearing world and in a deaf world at the same time. I can't say that I like one better than I like the other. I like them both. I speak pretty well; I gesture. If I don't understand something, you know, pen and paper, texting. I use it all.