Stephen Fry Quotes

I am critical of the parochial understanding of the Francophone movement and feel that it is used as a justification for not learning the language of the “other”. Those who respect the “other” are those who know them, and those who reject the language of the “other” are at a disadvantage. Learning the language of the “other” does not contradict our rejection of the dominance of their language, which is quite valid in my opinion.

Everyone has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.

If words are to change their meanings, as assuredly they are, let each user of language make such changes as please himself, put up his own suggestions, and let the best win.

Zis and zat' when uttered by the French is considered charming, but 'dis and dat' as an Africanism is ridiculed as gross and ugly.

The supposed inferiority of a constructed language to a national one on the score of richness of connotation is, of course, no criticism of the idea of a constructed language.

I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor.

I just love dialects; they're really fun.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

I'm not against accents - my husband's from Lancashire and has a rural Lancs accent. We've just got back from Scotland yesterday, and I love that Highland burr.

There are men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there upon the [Hudson] river.

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 don't pronounce all my words exactly how they do on the BBC. I am who I am.

There are more than thousand mother tongues spoken in our country. This is not just a number but a reason to be proud of.

One thing I wish I'd been told in school is that my language is valid.

My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper.

To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.

I am a writer, I deal in words. There is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It's all language, it's all communication.

Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.

There are many languages in the world; in meaning all are the same. If you break the cups, water will be unified and will flow together.

The world's five thousand extant languages are products of our shared ability, but the five thousand cultures they create are separate from each other.

Every man prays in his own language.

Africa. There are a gazillion different languages people speak there, different bone structures, so vast and different.

If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.

You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you're willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.