Quotes About Language

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people's memories for a while.

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

American audiences tend to be more expressive than British ones.

If you're in America a lot, it's easy to get into playing American. All of it, the sounds, the energies, all very different. But it's really hard to do the accent. I tend to try and stay in it all day, which is the only way I can manage it.

I guess when I first started speaking with an American accent, there's a tendency to create a caricature of the accent because you just exaggerate the pieces that stand out to you.

There is a tendency to try to dumb everything down and turn everything into a one-paragraph press release or even less, just a slogan.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don't even rhyme with T.

What you find with singers, no matter where they're from, if they have any kind of an accent, the accent tends to disappear when they sing.

I had a degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where they said, 'Mr. Jordan, please learn to pronounce your degree.' 'Cause I said I have a degree in 'thee-a-ter.'

I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.

In our house, the name for all athletic shoes - any that weren't dress or 'church' shoes - was 'tennis shoes,' or 'tennies.'

Isn't it funny - why is it called a tennis bracelet? It doesn't seem very tennis, does it?

One Oxford poet confessed to me that I had been scary because I talked American and wore tennis shoes.

Contractions, 'U' for 'you' and the like are wonderful to make communication brief and efficient - but we wouldn't want all our talk to be only brief and efficient. Taking pauses out of language would be like taking the net away from a tennis game. Where would all the fun go?

I went to play in Brazil when I had just turned 18 and was the world's top junior player. I got to the airport, and no one knew who I was. I couldn't speak any Portuguese, and no one spoke English. Then someone said something that resembled 'tennis,' and I went with that.

People's - most people's job is talking about the future or like money not even in the present tense. It's not even paper.

In German, if a situation is tense, you say 'unter strom' - under electricity.

History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.

I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived with this all my life - this divide, this bifurcation. And in Italy, I don't feel it. There's none of that tension, only the expectation I place on myself to speak the language well. I find it relaxing. Something drops away, and I observe.

The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

I'm very heavily involved in the editorial post-production process, and the camera - it's just such a big part of my storytelling language. I like creating the tension; I like creating the emotion through the movement of my camera, or the lack of movement through my camera, depending on what fits the scene best.

There's always that little bit of tension that happens when you make a joke, especially when there's a language barrier.

See, my strumpf is in my hair. Now, I don't know what strumpf means. It's just a term some brothas gave me.