Quotes & Sayings About English As A Lingua Franca

Good taste is always bad. — Poul Henningsen

I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages. — William Golding

I look at the Star of David as a symbol of righteousness. — Amar'e Stoudemire

Why are you all buttoned up like that?" Cameron ran his gaze down the blackberry-shaped buttons of her bodice.[ ... ] "You were happy to bare all last night," Cameron said. He let his mallet handler hover an inch from her chest. "Your bodice was down here."
Ainsley cleared her throat. "Low neckline for evening, high for morning."[ ... ]
"This doesn't suit you," Cameron said.
"I can't help the fashion, Lord Cameron."
Cameron poked the top button with his gloved finder. "Undo this."
Ainsley jumped. "What?"
"Unbutton your damned frock."
She nearly choked. "Why?"
"Because I want you to." Cameron's smile spread across his face, slow and sinful, and his voice went low. Dangerous. "Tell me, Mrs. Douglas. How many buttons will you undo for me? — Jennifer Ashley

25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who's crazy? — Andrew Ford

The Yellow Bear made its first appearance bobbing around on the swollen waters after the Great Flood, following which it disappeared for a while. It tended to show up in periods of unusual stress or upheaval. Even though it looked like it had been made in a factory by unskilled labourers, it had been forged in the Cradle of Civilisation and was said to be the product of a collaboration between humans and machines, lending some credence to the belief that machines had been on the planet long before humans were capable of making them. — Kathryn Davis

And over the course of the last six years, as I've directed more features and commercials, I've become better at articulating exactly how I want the audience to feel. — Jason Reitman

My name's Lassiter, and I'll tell you all you need to know about me. I'm an angel first and a sinner second, and I'm not here for long. I'll never hurt you, but I'm prepared to make you pretty goddamn uncomfortable if I have to, to get my job done. I like sunsets and long walks on the beach, but my perfect female no longer exists. Oh, and my favorite hobby is annoying the shit out of people. Guess I'm just bred to want to get a rise out of folks - probably the whole resurrection thing. — J.R. Ward

English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language
this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible
despite its barbaric accretions ... or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it. — Robert A. Heinlein

The magical force that had sundered everything in the castle had occasionally made some very odd choices in its destruction - Sand found a hammer that had been broken only at the wooden handle and not any of the metal parts, and another hammer whose handle was whole while the metal was broken. — Merrie Haskell

God's work in us does not eliminate our work; it enables it. We work because he is the one at work in us. Therefore, the fight for joy is possible because God is fighting for us and through us. — John Piper

So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word. — Gilbert Ryle

Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used. — Russell Baker