Language Ownership Quotes

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

Languages are not owned by nations but by the people who use them and make them live.

The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English. Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.

It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.

Ay, is it not a language I speak?

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.

Somebody out there was trying to use my language and trying to speak for me. Rather than have that happen, I thought I'd do it myself. It's a fun thing. It's a way for fans to connect.

English is my language because of the history, and what I try to do - and I did that in 'Carpentaria' in particular - is to write in the way we tell stories and in the voice of our own people and our own way of speaking.

As a woman of colour, as a person who is a minority, I believe its important that other people know about my language and I don't necessarily have to explain. In the same way, when I read 19th-century literature and if I have to understand a Latin phrase or a French phrase, it is incumbent upon me to learn it.

I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare.

The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.

I hate the neologism "owned" for "scored a victory over". I have no intention of owning anyone, and nobody will ever own me.

The English language is nobody's special property.

Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language.

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society.

I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.

All the academy will tell you that the language that is familiar to you is not appropriate. and that's not to say that there shouldn't be a standard, but when I come to school with my friends' language, my grandmother's language, the language in my mouth - you're going to tell me that's improper?

I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have dragged through I don't know how many consciences.

One belongs to one's language as a writer.

There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

There is a pride in speaking this language.