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Dialect Quotes

Browse 137 quotes about Dialect.

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Dialect Quotes

“The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.”

MindPhilosophyWisdomTruthReligionLanguageMusicKnowledgePracticeLearningTeacherAtheismDevelopmentJudgmentBibleCriticismLiesLogicMetaphorImprovementFoolishScriptureTheologyMaturityProphetDeceitApplicationPreacherFalsehoodSimileDiscernmentAgnosticismProfessionalTheismApologeticsImmaturityDialectStudyingArgumentationInstrumentFallaciesAmateurFalse ProphetLogical FallaciesFigurativeLingoMasteringCounter ArgumentFalse TeachingMastering The MindMastering OneselfAntitheisticFalse Preaching
Book:Healology
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“Tha didn't mek it, did tha, luv, Our gowden weddin' day. Wi tried so hard to keep thi, But tha quietly slipped away. It's fifty years ago to-day Sin' ah become thi bride, Ah'd give everythin' in t'world, mi luv, To have thi by mi side. But there, it seems 'twere noan fer t'be But ah seems to hear thi say, "Durn't fret, mi lass, just carry on, We'll meet agen some day.”

LoveDeathLossMarriageMourningDialectLancashire
Book:Poems in the Lancashire Dialect
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“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”

WritingRomanceLanguageRelationshipsTalkingRelationshipStyleCommunicationBedConversationSpeechCourtWordsTonguePursueDiscourseWoeVocabularyCantAcquaintanceKnowTalkSeeSpeakingCourtshipDialectJargonDateIdiomSlangEuphemismTerminologyFuckChaseMother TongueSexual IntercourseWordingCourtingExpressionsMake LoveEuphemismsWooChoice Of WordsLingoSleep WithPatoisNative TonguePhrasingAcquaintMake AcquaintanceParlancePhraseologyTurns Of PhraseUsagesArgotDysphemismDysphemismsForm Of ExpressionGo Out WithGo Steady WithIdiolectLocutionsMode Of ExpressionRun AfterSeek The HandSet One S Cap For
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.”

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Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“A little later, as we talked of the Maniot dirges by which I was obsessed, I was surprised to hear this bloodshot-eyed and barefoot old man say: “Yes, it’s the old iambic tetrameter acalectic.” It was the equivalent of a Cornish fisherman pointing out the difference, in practicality incomprehensible dialect, between the Petrachian and the Spenserian sonnet. It was quite correct. Where on earth had he learnt it? His last bit of information was that, in the old days (that wonderful cupboard!) the Arabs used to come to this coast to dive for the murex.”

SonnetOld DaysDialectArabsManiDirgeAcalecticIambicMetreMurexTetrameter
Book:Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese
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“This is one of the consequences of a superior education, you see. In this independent, hundred-per-cent-empowered and fully and totally indigenous blacker-than-black country, a superior education is one that the whites would value, and as whites do not value local languages at the altar of what the whites deem supreme. So it was in colonial times, and so it remains, more than thirty years later.”

LanguageRaceEducationColonialismAfricaZimbabweDialectAfrican LanguagesWhite WashMiseducationShonaLocal Languages
Book:The Book of Memory
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“Est-il préférable pour une société de parler une langue commune ou de maintenir plusieurs langues en même temps? Les personnes vivant dans une société multilingue sont souvent confrontées au dilemme de choisir la langue à utiliser. Par conséquent, il est crucial d'avoir une langue commune au sein d'une nation, car le multilinguisme peut entraîner des malentendus, de la confusion et des divisions. Il n'est donc pas étonnant que les premières tentatives de créer une langue commune remontent à l'Antiquité, lorsque les anciens Grecs qualifiaient de "barbares" (barbaros) ceux qui ne parlaient pas le grec.”

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Author:Mouloud Benzadi
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“During my first semester on campus, I was pretty shocked at how open everything was. I'd hear girls in the dorm talking about hooking up with guys they just met, and I wasn't even totally sure what that meant. Half the time, I'm still not sure, because it seems like different people mean different things. To some, it's just making out, but to others, it means sleeping with someone, and to others something in between, if you know what I mean. I spent a big chunk of my freshman year trying to unscramble the code.”

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Book:The Longest Ride
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“Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.”

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Author:Anne Lamott
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“Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive, formalised -- and ridiculous. Phrases, words, associations of sentences spin themselves out automatically, but have no effect: they have lost their power, their energy.”

CultureEnergyLostLanguageEffectsDevelopmentSentencesRidiculousPracticalsPhrasesAssociationRepetitiveDialect
Book:Shikasta: Re, Colonised Planet 5 : Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days
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“From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes , a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.”

PeopleHas BeensTwoCharacterFeelingsNationsDifferencesJusticeRaceLibertyMoralAspectEnglandNotionScotlandFlexibleSpineCharterScotchDialectStatutesIdiomBritonsTwo Nations
Author:John Galt
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“Jamie Keehn, our second Australian punter. Again, you have to learn the language. You just can't speak to those guys. You have to know how to speak Australian. ... Australians have a higher voice. When you just speak regular English, it doesn't quite get across. Of course, we've had experience with our Australians, so we're pretty comfortable with adjusting our dialect so that it fits the ability to communicate.”

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Author:Les Miles
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“Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of our lives are; perhaps that is why we love it so. City of plagues and brief liaisons, city of lingering deaths and incendiary loves, city of chimeras, nightmares, pigeons, bells. You are the only city in the world whose dialect has a word for the shimmer of canal water reflected on the ceiling of a room.”

WorldWaterRoomsCitiesOur LivesJourneySeaEdgesNightmareFragileBellsPlagueCeilingsVeniceLabyrinthPigeonsLingeringDialectCanalsCities In The WorldShimmerChimeraLiaison
Author:Erica Jong
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“But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.”

PeopleWayYearsSongFamilyVirtueBloodMy FamilyFaultsTongueMy WayAshamedDeniedFamily LifeDialect
Author:Agnes Smedley
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“My husband and I speak an ancient language called grammatical English, and the kids speak a strange dialect which is difficult to decode because it is based on only four phrases: 'Huh,' 'I dunno,' 'It's not my turn,' and 'I do everything around here!”

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Book:Murphy must have been a mother!: (and other laws I live by)
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“Partisans present some of the most refreshing music I've heard in a long while, uncompromising, very well written and very well played. It demands serious attention. I hear in these players a sense of common purpose and resolve, and a strong command of a dialect uniquely suited to this music. It's heartening to hear music that looks to find its own particular place.”

WellsLooksLongPurposeStrongCommonAttentionPlayerWrittenHeardParticularSeriousDemandCommandResolvePartisansRefreshingDialectWell WrittenUncompromisingCommon Purpose
Author:Steve Swallow
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“We [ with Russel Crowe] had an Arabic coach there [ in the Body of Lies] that was really helpful, because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact, and there's different dialects of Arabic from country to country so it was really, really difficult to tell you the truth. And one of the hardest things I've ever had to do language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It's different. And also learning about the customs and the culture and all that, so we had advisors for that sort of thing.”

DifferentCountryBodyLyingCultureLanguageDifficultWiseCoachesHardestHelpfulCustomsThroatAccentsHardest ThingDialectAdvisors
Author:Leonardo DiCaprio
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“I look at the natural geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines.”

WorldLooksHas BeensTwoCountryLastsScienceThreeNaturalLinesRecordsWrittenPagesChaptersVolumeWorld HistoryHere And ThereMe AloneDialect
Book:The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 10: The Foundations of The Origin of the Species: Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844
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“There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properlybe styled The Language Contradictory.... In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering.... But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion.”

KindMayLittlesWholeLastsPassionLanguageCompanyTalkingMarriageSubjectsObjectsSucceedProveMethodRemainsAriseFormerContradictionSatireIntoleranceIndifferentContradictoryCoveringDefianceDialect
Author:Sarah Fielding
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