Linguistic Variation Quotes

Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.

Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.

People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.

My characters don't talk necessarily in a normal American way of talking. They talk a little different.

Even when a Geordie is trying to be nasty, it doesn't sound that threatening.

Part of what makes a language 'alive' is its constant evolution. I would hate to think Britain would ever emulate France, where they actually have a learned faculty whose job it is to attempt to prevent the incursion of foreign words into the language. I love editing Harry with Arthur Levine, my American editor-the differences between 'British English' (of which there must be at least 200 versions) and 'American English' (ditto!) are a source of constant interest and amusement to me.

I'm about as monolingual as you come, but nevertheless, I have a variety of different languages at my command, different styles, different ways of talking, which do involve different parameter settings.

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

My upbringing is so fundamentally different to my parents'. It must be strange to look at your child who not only speaks with a different accent but has a totally different view of the world.

It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.

I think dialects should be left alone. People should write in whatever dialect they feel they want to write. In the fullness of time, these dialects will sort themselves out.

I always wonder whether I'll get treated differently with a different accent.

I'm from Connecticut, and we don't have any dialects. Well, I don't think we have any dialects, and yeah, it's very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail.

We will never have "a" Chicano English or Spanish because of regional differences. But I think that because of our bilingual history, we'll always be speaking a special kind of English and Spanish. What we do have to do is fight for the right to use those two languages in the way that it serves us.

Now multitudes of root words are identical in the American languages over vast areas some of them with precisely the same senses, and others with various shades of analogical meaning.

I don't see myself as experimenting in any conscious way, it's perhaps that certain books require different densities of language.

I use the word totally too much. I need to change it up and use a word that is different but has the same meaning. Mitch do you like submarine sandwiches? All-encompassingly.

You say 'erbs, and we say Herbs because there's a f*****g H in it!

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.

The Australian accent just a very lovely accent and it doesn't have the pretention maybe of an English accent, but yet seems a little bit more exotic than an American.

I, like many annoying pedants, will wince when someone says 'less' when they should have said 'fewer.' But my 'poor' sounds like poo-ah, not pore; and my 'grass' rhymes with mass, not farce. What's wrong with that?

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.

The American language differs from the English in that it seeks the top of expression while English seeks its lowly valleys.