Dialect Quotes

• Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

  Thomas Hardy

  Beast, Mark, Terrible

  Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) ch. 20

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• At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.

  David Crystal

  Style, Kaleidoscope, Language

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• I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect.

  Emily Carr

  Different, Half, Language

  Emily Carr (2009). “Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr”, p.289, D & M Publishers

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• 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

  Communication, Race, Growth

  Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.557, Penguin

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• An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.

  Mason Cooley

  Literature, Academic, Term

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• 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.

  Christopher Moore

  Hip Hop, Way, Hips

  "OMFG, Horatio!" by Christopher Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 23, 2010.

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• So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

  Emily Carr

  Silence, Sound, Might

  Emily Carr (2009). “Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr”, p.289, D & M Publishers

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• In the Phaedrus, Plato argued that the new arrival of writing would revolutionize culture for the worst. He suggested that it would substitute reminiscence for thought and mechanical learning for the true dialect of the living quest for truth by discourse and conversation.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Plato, Writing, Media

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• No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Trying, Should

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• The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Angel, Men, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.104, Graphic Arts Books

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• The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to.

  Audra McDonald

  Southern, Typical, Sound

  "Audra McDonald: Shaping 'Bess' On Broadway". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. May 15, 2012.

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• The Language of the Dream/Night is contrary to that of Waking/Day. It is a language of Images and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Dream, Night, Waking

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• A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Stupid, Pedants

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great”, p.276

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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.

  Steve Swallow

  Strong, Player, Common Purpose

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• I think Shakespeare is like a dialect. If I heard a broad Scots accent, I'd probably struggle at first but then I'd start to look for words I recognise and I'd get the gist. I think Shakespeare is like that.

  Ralph Fiennes

  Struggle, Thinking, Gist

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• I had a dialect coach to get an American accent, and then another dialect coach to come off it a bit. There is something deep and mysterious in the voice when it isn't too high-pitched American.

  Archie Panjabi

  Dialect Coach, Voice, Mysterious

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reform, Facts, Helping

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• I think dialects should be left alone. People should write in whatever dialect they feel they want to write. In the fullness of time, these dialects will sort themselves out.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I have a dialect myself; it's more pronounced, because I have studied theatre and been in England. It's half-British, half-Indian.

  Kunal Nayyar

  Theatre, Half, England

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Well, American dialects have been studied for a hundred years or so.

  William Labov

  Years, Hundred, Wells

  "Sound Change". "Wordmaster" with Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble, learningenglish.voanews.com. January 12, 2005.

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• My whole deal when I do accents or dialects is I gotta fool the locals. If I fool the locals then I've done my job.

  Brion James

  Jobs, Done, Fool

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• READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Country, Reading, Sphinx

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.176, 谷月社

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• The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

  Martin Henderson

  Dialect Coach, Six Months, Littles

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy.

  Lily Rabe

  Running, Real, Play

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.

  William Labov

  Years, African American, Important

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