Linguistic Differences Quotes

There is the English language and then there's the Trump language.

In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names.

Human language is nothing like the signalling systems of other animals.

What Americans call cross-ventilation, the English call draughts.

There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and those who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.

Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.

Things on the whole are faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he's sick, it doesn't mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don't ask for the left-luggage; it's called a checkroom.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

Musicals are written in English, and then we import them to Japan. When we translate them into Japanese, the sounds of the language are completely different. The Japanese language is not the best for singing, in terms of sound.

Two nations divided by a common language.

There's inherent cultural imbalance whenever you're translating from Chinese to English. Educated Chinese readers are expected not only to know about all the Chinese references - history, language, culture, all this stuff - but to be well-versed in Western references as well.

Accents are always difficult in their way, but as long as you're not throwing an audience off with it, then that's all it should be.

The way I think or sing about something is very different if it is in Spanish or English.

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

I think, for the English accent, we don't say our Rs, contrary to a standard American accent.

When I encountered rich people for the first time, I discovered that not only do they holiday in places that are hard to find on a map, but that they also use the names of seasons as verbs. When they asked me, 'Where did you summer and winter growing up?' I would usually say, 'As a child? The same place I springed and autumned.'

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case." --

I have some English words on the first album, but any time I try to do it, you miss something. You think it's just a simple translation from French to English, but it's so different as far as the understanding.

We focus upon pairs of words very often which are the same in some areas and different in other areas.

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.

In a language, in the system of language, there are only differences. Therefore, a taxonomical operation an undertake the systematic, statistical, and classificatory inventory of a language.

My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early in my career on conversations between speakers of different ethnic and regional backgrounds.

If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'