Donna Tartt Quotes

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.

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.

Unlike our neighbours on the mainland of Europe, we have resisted creating an academy to legislate over proper English. We each have our linguistic bugbear, but few of us would want to freeze our mother tongue.

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

I'm a big believer in change and embrace the fact that English is probably the fastest-moving language in the world.

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.

I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.

English is a stretch language; one size fits all.

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

The ethos of 50 years ago was that there was one kind of English that was right and everything else was wrong; one kind of access that was right and everything else was inferior. Then nobody touched language for two generations. When it gradually came back in, we didn't want to go back to what we did in the 1950s. There's a new kind of ethos now.

I speak three other languages - Serbian, French, and Italian - but typically read in English.

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.

If you're talking about industry, I've never restricted myself to Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, or Kannada. Whichever the language is, from Swahili to Marathi or Bhojpuri to Bengali, I would be happy to do it.

In South Africa, we speak English and sometimes Afrikaans, sometimes Zulu, sometimes Xhosa.

You don't have to speak English to have sophisticated political opinions.

In the 21st century, government efforts should focus on 'multiculturalism', including the diversity of languages.

It's really natural for me to write bilingually.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you

'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'

Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.

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

Verbing weirds language.