Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man? — Henry David Thoreau
Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all. — Walt Whitman
We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood. — Penelope Keith
Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage. — Marilyn vos Savant
The hottest new programming language is English. — Andrej Karpathy
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. — William Golding
Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. — William Raspberry
Be able to correctly pronounce the words you would like to speak and have excellent spoken grammar. — Marilyn vos Savant
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. — Derek Walcott
My grammar be's ebonics, gin tonics, and chronic. — Nelly
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street. — E. B. White
At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects. — David Crystal
Broken Irish is better than clever English — Irish Proverbs
The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. — Robert Burchfield
England and America are two countries separated by the same language. — George Bernard Shaw
Short Standard English Quotes
You cannot sing African music in proper English — Fela Kuti
The language of truth is unadorned and always simple. — Ammianus Marcellinus
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country. — Robert Frost
Standard English Image Quotes
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
English Language Quotes
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. — Ronald Reagan
The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers ... those who feel they cannot do without English can as well pack up and go. — Jomo Kenyatta
Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language. So we're talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people's lives in history. — Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Keep your head and standards high!
In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? — Marlene Dietrich
I can fluently speak five languages: English, emoji, sexting, sarcasm and sass. — Tyler Oakley
I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power. — Ngugi wa Thiong'o
It seems to me that once if your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. — Booker T. Washington
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
FEAR is an acronym in the English language for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'. — Neale Donald Walsch
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside? — Jackson Browne
American English Quotes
All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world. — David Livingstone
The most significant event of the 20th century will be the fact that the North Americans speak English. — Otto von Bismarck
Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American. — Renny Harlin
Just because she has high standards doesn't mean she’s high maintenance. Don't confuse the two.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house. — Theodore Roosevelt
It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting our high technology from weaponry to livingry.
This African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways, and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect spoken in continental North America. — William Labov
Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. — Sarah Palin
MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman. — Ambrose Bierce
I could speak to you and say, 'Laytay-chai, paisey, paisey.' ... Why aren't you responding? Oh, you don't speak Swahili. Well, I've got news for you. The dog doesn't speak English, or American, or Spanish, or French. — Ian Dunbar
Modern English Quotes
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. — Mark Antony
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. — Jeffrey Eugenides
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. — Mark Twain
Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. — Daniel O'Connell
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. — Terry Prachett
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion. — John Ruskin
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. — Terry Pratchett
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. — W. S. Merwin
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. — William Shakespeare
When Jerry Lewis and I were big, we used to go to parties, and everybody thought I was big-headed and stuck up, and I wasn't. It was because I didn't know how to speak good English, so I used to keep my mouth shut. — Dean Martin
My identity comprises more than just my faith. I am a proud Muslim, but I am also a liberal, a Briton, a Pakistani, a Londoner, a father, a product of the globalized world who speaks English, Arabic, and Urdu. — Maajid Nawaz
Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions. — Albert Bushnell Hart
Speaking fluent English - like doing long division or successfully rewiring a 220-volt electrical outlet - is not a skill you're born with. It's something you learn, occasionally even by opening some old dictionary. — Tucker Carlson
I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life. — Gavin McInnes
Reading sci-fi with humanoid aliens who speak English and have faces is what others must be experiencing as they hear a fork scratching a plate. — Andrej Karpathy
I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish. — Joshua Foer
The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men. — Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
We all need to stomp out balkanization. No Spanish radio stations, no Spanish billboards, no Spanish TV stations, no Spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English. — John Huppenthal
I am a Mexican that has been lucky enough to travel the world, speaking English, but with a heart that speaks a universal language. — Cesar Millan
Spoken English Quotes
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think. — Colin Firth
If English is spoken in heaven. God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos. — Prince Charles
When you hear a kind word spoken about a friend, tell him so. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
While he has not, in my hearing, spoken the English language, he makes it perfectly plain that he understands it. And he uses his ears, tail, eyebrows, various rumbles and grunts, the slant of his great cold nose or a succession of heartrending sighs to get his meaning across. — Jean Little
In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay. — Richard Rodriguez
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough. — Adam Gopnik
I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago. — Carl Sandburg
It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race. — Lafcadio Hearn
Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it. — Sandra Cisneros
That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music. — John R. Rickford
English Education Quotes
Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. — Patrick Pearse
Anyone who keeps learning stays young. — Henry Ford
You have to be a whole, dignified, self-respecting person in order to be an English teacher or whatever kind of job your education would prepare you for, and I just knew that segregation was wrong, and I knew that I should not be going along with it. That I should resist it. — Diane Nash
Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn — Albert Einstein
Anyone who stops learning is old — whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable — regardless of physical capacity. — Henry Ford
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis. — Khushwant Singh
All the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until they are able to read English writing well. — Alfred the Great
Warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. — Carl Jung
Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science. — Geoffrey Canada
Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble....In no Book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant, and by teaching all the same they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith. — Fisher Ames
Because of the way our society is structures, using sentences such as "I don't it" can put people at a disadvantage. And this is, of course, why teachers have to give students access to Standard English, in order to protect them against this sort of prejudice. — Kate Burridge
I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English. — William Golding
All messages from Satan are played forward and are in standard American English. — George Carlin
An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever. — Jonathan Swift
I find standard American the hardest. It really fits in a different place in your mouth. Southern, I find the easiest. If you talk to a dialect coach and you get sort of technical, where an English person keeps their voice in their throat, a Southern person does the same, and it's got the same sort of music to talking. — Juno Temple
Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days. — Evan Parker
People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew. — John H. McWhorter
In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif's novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that's being spoken by Egyptians. It's a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, "broken" English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules. — Elliott Colla
Through radio I look forward to a United States of the World. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the Earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of the ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence. (1926) — Arthur E. Kennelly
Through radio I look forward to a united states of the world. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of the ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence — Arthur Edwin Kennelly
English girls' schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century. — Mary Augusta Ward
I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that. — Irvine Welsh
Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it. — Irvine Welsh
The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham. — Unknown Author
Going for constant growth is not actually delivering a decent standard of living and the prospect of your children having a better life than you do. That is the key thing that politics needs to deliver: a better life for your children. That's why people are taking their lives in their hands and crossing the Mediterranean and the English Channel. — Billy Bragg
The history of English is full of that, lots of things done with good intentions that 200 years down the road have resulted in a giant mess, where someone's pet peeves - like John Dryden and his hatred of terminal prepositions - could become real standards. — Kory Stamper
I make the case in the book that Standard English, that language we all aspire to live and move and have our being within, is actually based on a fiction. It's not anyone's native way of speaking or writing. That's why we have to take classes in it. Language is just really squishy. — Kory Stamper
No matter how irrelevant social class now is, even the most eager egalitarian must be quietly proud that the posh English rose is still an industry standard for peerlessly sophisticated beauty. — Kate Reardon
As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game. — V. S. Pritchett
The English also had a reputation, shared with the Dutch, for blowing up their ships to avoid capture. In 1611, for instance, the Spanish Admiral Don Pedro de toledo captured a Turkish pirate ship, but its English consort, 'being wont to seek a voluntary death rather than yield, blew up their ship when they saw resistance useless'. Blowing up their ships, or at least threatening to do so, would become standard pirate practice. — Peter Earle
Television watching does reduce reading and often encroaches on homework. Much of it is admittedly the intellectual equivalent of junk food. But in some respects, such as its use of standard written English, television watching is acculturative. — Edward Hirsch
English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind. — Lytton Strachey
We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned. — Raymond Williams
Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures. — Lawrence Venuti
Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing. — John H. McWhorter
But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation. — Barbara Kingsolver
I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved. — Ashwin Sanghi
In Conclusion
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