Quotes About Language

Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it.

For Cantonese - because there's no standardized pinyin system - I have to have someone read it to me, and then I rewrite the whole script in my own Cantonese pinyin.

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.

Is it possible that literacy standards are falling because young Australians are growing up in a culture in which they can be entertained and informed, and in which they can communicate effectively, without having to master any but the most rudimentary literacy skills?

I think integration in Norway is, by all standards, going relatively well. People are working, taking education, learning the language.

I think integration in Norway is, by all standards, going relatively well. People are working, taking education, learning the language. But, yes, it is a challenge. And democracy and democratic debate has to be open to take that debate openly and not push questions aside.

My English isn't that good, maybe just 40 per cent fine by normal standards.

I often hear women approvingly describe themselves or other women as feisty. Feisty, I feel, has sexist implications, as if standing up for yourself was exceptional in a woman. It sounds like a word that a raffish Lothario would use about a difficult conquest.

From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.

Poetry stands or falls by its music.

Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.

It's still a soft R, but when I watch other people's standup, I'm dumbfounded that people call me dirty. That's only because I did family television.

No man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

Man's command of the language is most important. Next to kissing, it's the most exciting form of communication.

You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.

For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.

Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.

In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own

What is one man's hate speech is another man's poetry.