Keyshawn Johnson Quotes

I would always talk with my friends in English and Spanglish, but it was more like slang. It was more like, 'Yo, what's up, dog?' But in Spanish, I know what's proper, and what's ghetto. I know the difference.

We just say things differently in Australia - like torch. I'd ask, 'Can I have the torch?' It seems to fall flat when I say, 'Can I have the flashlight?'

Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.

My characters don't talk necessarily in a normal American way of talking. They talk a little different.

Language is ever on the move, and most days, I check out the 'Urban Dictionary' where anyone can invent a new and useful word or phrase.

The American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth

That's one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I'm very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.

I certainly don't walk around my home or being with my family and just using profane language all the time, but on stage, it's a constant.

Every black American is bilingual. All of them. We speak street vernacular and we speak 'job interview.'

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s.

If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'

I talk to millions of people every day. I just like it when they can't talk back.

See, my strumpf is in my hair. Now, I don't know what strumpf means. It's just a term some brothas gave me.

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating.

I like a New York accent.

With the coming of radio as a mass medium, suddenly the world changed. It became about, 'Can this leader project emotional connection through the way he speaks on the radio?' And the anxiety about whether he could do that, we've inherited.

I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

From Dickens's cockneys to Salinger's phonies, from Kerouac's beatniks to Cheech and Chong's freaks, and on to hip hop's homies, dialect has always been used as a way for generations to distinguish themselves.

Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.

Language is my bugbear. Everyone says things now like 'I was sat' instead of 'I was sitting', which just sounds so ugly.

What I've learned is that the audience is constantly rotating. Just because it feels like I've said it, there are millions and millions of people that have still never heard of it.

The British have slang words, as we do, but it was fun.

It's Fifty, not Fiddy.

My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.

My accent depends on whom I'm around.