87 quotes found
“Like so many colours, like so many flavours, like so many fragrance, English grammar should be a personal choice.”
“Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them?”
“It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or a...”
“The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.”
“In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and...”
“English is the language through which I reach hearts from various corners of the world. English is the language through which I flirt with my species. English is the language through which I make m...”
“It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like (OO), it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to 'oo'.”
“Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will ...”
“Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words village and age whatsoever.”
“To this day, good English usually means the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.”
“I'm English. We're about as tactful as a hot poker up the bum, most of the time.”
“The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without alter...”
“In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to ...”
“I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majes...”
“He would not mind hearing Petruss story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.”
“Because of social strictures against even the mildest swearing, America developed a particularly rich crop of euphemistic expletives - darn, durn, goldurn, goshdad, goshdang, goshawful, blast, cons...”
“English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which...”
“As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after another, from the word-box you carry around with you, and slotted into place. That is not how a true native speak, one who is born in...”
“I'm a writer to the bone. I love this language you and I read, write and speak. It's called English. And I'm seriously doubting that it's known to some of the unseen people who write the news.”
“English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or...”
