English Speakers Quotes & Sayings

Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing. — John McWhorter

What English speakers call "computer science" Europeans have known as informatique, informatica, and Informatik — James Gleick

All the English speakers, or almost all, have difficulties with the gender of words. — Bernard Pivot

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. — Steven Pinker

Language and History in Viking Age England: Language Relations between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English (Turnbout, 2002). — F. Donald Logan

The lexis is a measure of shared experience, which comes from interconnectedness. The number of users of the language forms only the first part of the equation: jumping in four centuries from 5 million English speakers to a billion. — James Gleick

In an ideal world, the time English speakers devote to steeling themselves against, and complaining about, things like Billy and me, singular they, and impact as a verb would be better spent attending to genuine matters of graceful oral and written expression. — John McWhorter

Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him "Stumpy" or "the maimed one."
It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish. — Gwen Cooper

An English comedian once explained the popularity of umlauts among native English speakers as follows: "It's almost as if they had two eyes. You look at the umlaut, and the umlaut looks right back at you! I believe that, because of the umlauts, a close friendship can arise between the reader and the text being read. — David Bergmann

He had a voice you couldn't miss: strong and penetrating with strange vowels that sounded different from the accents of other English speakers even to me. I later discovered that he was Canadian. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

What was it about English speakers that allowed them to talk into transmitters as if the sky were a diary? — Adam Johnson

English has always had a special fondness for other European languages, a neighborly soft spot - perhaps because Britain has been invaded by speakers of those languages from the onset of its recorded history. — Rabih Alameddine

The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated. — Njabulo S. Ndebele

Yes," I said. "Temudjin Oh." I'd long got used to the fact that my Mongolian-extraction surname could cause some amusement amongst English speakers determined to extract a toll of discomfiture from somebody whose name was not as banal or as ugly as theirs. However, there was something about the way she pronounced it that immediately brought a blush to my cheeks. Perhaps the sunset would cover my embarassment. — Iain M. Banks

Anna, like most English speakers, thought GASP was a silly name for the project. But the name got the point across. If there were modern wonders of the world, GASP - and Kali - stood as far above them as the Colossus of Rhodes had stood above man. — A. Ashley Straker

The mass migration of the poorest of the poor to America is bad for the whole country, but it's fantastic for Democrats. Ask yourself: Which party benefits from illiterate non-English speakers who have absolutely no idea what they're voting for, but can be instructed to learn certain symbols? — Ann Coulter

There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it? — Barbara Ehrenreich

This column was an attempt to convey to British readers something of the flavor of high-school graduation, a ritual largely unknown across the Atlantic and one at odds with the basic organizing principle of English education: The continual assurances by commencement speakers that yours is the most awesome generation ever to walk the earth ring a little odd if you're a survivor of some grim Dotheboys Hall where the prevailing educational philosophy was to lower your self-esteem to undetectable levels by the end of the first week. — Mark Steyn

contextualization is inevitable. As soon as you choose a language to speak in and particular words to use within that language, the culture-laden nature of words comes into play. We often think that translating words from one language to another is simple - it's just a matter of locating the synonym in the other language. But there are few true synonyms. The word God is translated into German as Gott - simple enough. But the cultural history of German speakers is such that the word Gott strikes German ears differently than the English word God strikes the ears of English speakers. It means something different to them. You may need to do more explanation if you are to give German speakers the same biblical concept of God that the word conveys to English speakers. — Timothy J. Keller

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

My parents were both Spanish-speakers and they used to speak to me and my siblings in Spanish and we'd answer them in English. — America Ferrera

However differently we spoke the language, as Spanish speakers, our close ties with Latin and Greek gave us a sense of superiority: we were the heirs to a noble linguistic past. English, in contrast, was the barbaric bastard son of Latin, constantly gloating over its discoveries: the demiurgic function of articles, inventing the world by enunciating it. — Valeria Luiselli

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongue. — Anne Rice

James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world. — Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh

English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. "Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist" [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. — Bill Bryson

Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. — Gloria E. Anzaldua

On the one hand, there is no question that English - frequently bad English - has become the universal language of scholarship. It is clearly a tremendous handicap for people outside of the United States, Britain, and Australia and a few other countries because few of them are native speakers, but we demand that they present and publish in English. — Henry Rosovsky

The fact of English supremacy is something most native speakers of English unknowingly suppress, all the while enjoying the privileges that come with it. Many non-English-speaking populations, however, cannot afford to suppress that fact but are forced to face it in one way or another, though their writers generally turn their backs on the linguistic asymmetry lest they end up too discouraged to write, overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. — Juliet Winters Carpenter

The complexities of the English language are such that even native speakers cannot always communicate effectively, as almost every American learns on his first day in Britain. — Bill Bryson

I recognized the words "domestic violence" because the Japanese use the same words, only with blockier pronunciation. " Domesuchikku baiorensu". I think it's weird they use the same word; I'm pretty sure they invented domestic violence independently of us English-speakers, at the same time we were inventing it independently of them. — Tim Rogers

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas. — Steven Pinker

English is not merely a language anymore; it has become a way of life for millions of non-native English speakers around the world. — M.F. Moonzajer

There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans
who were not allowed to learn to read and write
and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Contrary to English which has two liquid phonemes, Asian languages have one liquid consonant which causes Asian speakers to have difficulty in hearing and producing /L/ and /R/ accurately. When we examine the pictographic script we observe that the sickle tool is represented by a staff-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'L' and the head is represented by a head-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'R'; it is as if the Asiatic culture got historically traumatized based on the cultural confrontation between the Aryan and Semitic traditions. If we look at Early Aramaic alphabet we observe that the 'R' looks like a serpent's head and 'L' looks like the sickle. If originally the script got developed from hieroglyphs, then it ought to operate in that same manner rather than being phonetically produced for example by the sound of cutting wheat for the letter 'R' as my friend Randy Simons suggested. — Ibrahim Ibrahim