Dialectal Variation Quotes

Every time I get in an Uber in L.A., they're like, 'Oh, great accent. Are you from Australia?' I constantly have to repeat myself when I'm in North America because no one understands a word I'm saying.

What happens when I go to America is I sound really English. Most people would start sounding American, but I do the opposite.

Well, I've never dropped the word 'eh.' That's still at the end of my sentence, replacing the question mark.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

Language changes very fast.

It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.

I have enough trouble just speaking normal Australian. On 'Vikings,' we had a great vocal coach who helped make all of us sound the same. But I'm very bad at accents, to be honest.

However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.

I've met people whose accents have nothing to do with where they were born or raised - they want to reinvent themselves.

I don't have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is their identity - they form part of the linguistic color of a period.

I still have that South Indian accent. But I am working on it. Hindi audiences should feel that I am speaking like them and should relate to me.

Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

Bilingual films come with a certain inbuilt practical problem with respect to the setting of the story and the dialect.