Speech Patterns Quotes

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

In my day-to-day, I might speak, like, 10 sentences.

I'm not against accents - my husband's from Lancashire and has a rural Lancs accent. We've just got back from Scotland yesterday, and I love that Highland burr.

I never really think too much about my voice.

Both my parents had heavy accents, and so did everybody they knew. It's a rhythm thing - people who speak English where they have to hesitate and think of the right word. And I think it rubbed off.

A voice and an accent are two very different things. The voice of a man is how he speaks from his heart, right in the middle of him... And then you stick an accent on top of that.

I've actually, very rarely have I worked in my own voice. I've played, I think, Russian, American, Northern from the North of England. All sorts of different accents I've worked in.

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

I think people are really picky about English accents. When a Brit comes over here and kind of does an OK American accent, everyone's like, 'You were great! Fantastic!' But in England, even if you were doing a pretty good accent, they're like, 'But where are you from?' 'London.' 'What part of London?' Accents are really precious over there.

English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.

I subconsciously mimic whomever I'm talking to, so I've been mistaken for a Canadian, a South American, and somebody from the West Country.

I like to mimic accents. I don't even know if that's a talent. That's just a weird thing that I do.

Language is a form of organized stutter.

I was always quite good with accents - I always had quite a good ear - so from the age of about 13, I used to do a lot of voiceover and dubbing for foreign films.

I'm very bad at ending sentences. A lot times I just want to say, 'That's the end of my sentence. I have nothing more to say.'

Language and accents govern so much of how people think about other people.

Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister.

You know, so many people say TV makes you stupid. But it had the complete opposite effect on me. It kept me from having a really bad Southern accent.

My accent gets more pronounced when I've been talking to people from Derry.

I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.

Those English and Scottish know how to do accents.

I actually had a cockney accent before I went to drama school. It's softened up a bit.

I start by using Chinese and many of the sounds of other languages are similar.

Once you break someone of the habit of up-talking, they can start to see immediate improvement in their careers.

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.