Language Flexibility Quotes

I'm a bit like a chameleon with my accent.

If I'm performing in the United States, I'm able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I'm in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I'm completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.

My first language is French. I just love words so much, and in French it feels like I can say whatever I want however I want.

I will do films in any of the languages, provided the script is good. The region and the language don't matter.

The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors of the language when in fact our job is not to put a lid on it.

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.

I speak English my way, but people understand it. You can understand everything I say, and that's the most important thing.

I use Mandarin, Korean and English on a daily basis and usually only use Cantonese when I'm speaking with my relatives. I don't think it's very difficult for me to switch between each language because I've been doing it for so long.

I don't know of any wrong road to Dictionopolis, so if this road goes to Dictionopolis at all it must be the right road, and if it doesn't it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere. Do you think it will rain?

We never choose which words to use, for as long as they mean what they mean to mean, we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.

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

I'm not good enough to flip in and out of my Brit accent to my American accent.

We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people.

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

I have learned to interface - what I think would be the contemporary term - with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I've learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.

My primary focus will be Malayalam films. I will choose from what comes my way and take a call irrespective of the language.

Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are "prefabricated" in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak.

The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

It's a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.

Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren't going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. "It is an old observation," he writes, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric." Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: "Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules."

To be honest, it's easier for me to speak with an American accent.

It's really natural for me to write bilingually.

It's really funny, because if you make up words, then people project their own meanings onto it, which I find interesting.

Python is an experiment in how much freedom programmers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read another's code; too little and expressiveness is endangered.

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.