Grenville Kleiser Quotes

Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.

I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.

Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at.

I do speak a bit of Bengali.

So Mandarin, I picked it up, I spent a year in Beijing studying but then when you don't use it, languages, you just kinda forget it all.

It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country, and they don't understand what I am saying because they don't speak English. I think that's wrong. It's nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect; it's just not right.

When I was little, seven or eight years old, in third and fourth grade, I would always try to use long words and stuff.

I am comfortable with all four South Indian languages.

I speak Vietnamese and conversational Spanish.

The way the educational system in Russia works is studying a foreign language is part of the program, so by the time you get to the age of 10, you pick up another language. I speak a bit of Russian, a bit of English, a bit of Spanish a bit of French.

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Usage is the best language teacher.

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.

Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.

One of the first things that my English teacher told when I began studying in New York was, "You're here because if you pick it up from the street, not everyone speaks good English." And it happens all the time, anywhere. If you pick up Spanish from the streets, you're not going to be able to speak it correctly.

Don't use big words. They mean so little.

Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words, the more successful our adjustment is likely to be.

The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself.

Learning to speak, therefore, and the power it brings of intelligent converse with others, is a most impressive further step along the path of independence ... Learning to walk is especially significant, not only because it is supremely complex, but because it is done in the first year of life.

We do not for example say that the person has a perfect knowledge of some language L similar to English but still different from it. What we say is that the child or foreigner has a 'partial knowledge of English' or is 'on his or her way' towards acquiring knowledge of English, and if they reach this goal, they will then know English.