Susie Dent Quotes

English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.

I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.

English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

I speak all my languages basically every day with the people in the dressing room, and it's a pleasure to be able to do so. On the pitch, if it's a group of players I'm trying to communicate with, then I use English because you need to make sure everyone understands what you are saying.

From the start, English has happily absorbed words from every tongue it's encountered.

It's funny how quickly human beings adapt.

Language doesn't seem to be a barrier for me to do films in the south.

Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

Lexical variety, eccentric constructions and punctuation, variant spellings, archaisms, the ability to pile clause on clause, the effortless incorporation of words from other languages: flexibility, and inclusiveness, is what makes English great; and diversity is what keeps it healthy and growing, exuberantly regenerating itself with rich new forms and usages.

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

English is a second language in most of the educated sectors of Europe and much of the world. But maybe in the future Chinese will be. But I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

The whole world turns upside down in ten years, but you turn upside down with it.

It's no big deal about how you get language to evolve. You cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent things to each other.

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.

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.

Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

I have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on my hotel door. It's time to go to "Don't Disturb". It's been "Do Not" for too long. We should embrace the contraction.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

If you’ve got a dozen pitchers, you need to speak 12 different languages.

I'm accepting of change, and accepting of transforming myself at any given time necessary. At this point in my life, sometimes I have to be mom, sometimes I have to come to work, sometimes I have to be a wife. I love that I don't ever have to be just one thing.