Dialect Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Talking, Dialect Coach, Voice

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• What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

  Branford Marsalis

  America, Musical, Asking

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• Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

  Doris Lessing

  Time, Space, Fiction

  The Guardian (London), November 7, 1988.

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• Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy

  Robin Tunney

  Giving, Three, Actors

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• 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

  America, Vocabulary, Different

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• To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Country, Class, Nomenclature

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• Obama a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.

  Harry Reid

  Country, Light, Racism

  "Harry Reid’s Non-Gaffe" by Kevin Drum, www.motherjones.com. January 10, 2010.

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• Each dancer has a different dialect that they speak.

  Jon M. Chu

  Dancer, Different, Speak

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• Shakespearean words, foreign words, slang and dialect and made-up phrases from kids on the street corner: English has room for them all. And writers - not just literary writers, but popular writers as well - breathe air into English and keep it lively by making it their own, not by adhering to some style manual that gets handed out to college Freshmen in a composition class.

  Donna Tartt

  Kids, College, Air

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

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• In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.

  Criss Jami

  Philosophical, Style, Insult

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.129, Criss Jami

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• Dialect or the speech of the people is capable of expressing whatever the people are.

  Sterling K. Brown

  People, Speech, Capable

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• All nationalistic distinctions - all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect - are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Skulls, Long

  George Orwell (2016). “The Road to Wigan Pier”, p.76, Jester House Publishing

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• If you think of music as a universal language, it still has some very powerful dialects.

  Jerry Garcia

  Powerful, Thinking, Language

  Source: medium.com

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• The American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth

  Rudyard Kipling

  Insulting, Language, Accents

  Rudyard Kipling (2015). “Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated): 5 Novels & 350+ Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Military Works and Autobiographical Writings from one of the most popular writers in England, known for The Jungle Book, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King”, p.4737, e-artnow

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• It's hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.

  Jay Roach

  Voice, Age, Sound

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• One cannot understand the rhythms and meanings of the outer world until one has mastered the dialects of the body.

  Timothy Leary

  Soul, World, Body

  Timothy Leary (1968). “The Politics of Ecstasy”

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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.

  Erica Jong

  Journey, Sea, Cities

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• French was the only language we had in common, and even that was like a dialect we had picked up at a rummage sale, rusty and missing a lot of essential parts.

  Patricia Hampl

  Missing, Essentials, Common

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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.

  Doris Lessing

  Development, Association, Energy

  Doris Lessing (1979). “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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• I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.

  Billy Bob Thornton

  Dialect Coach, Trying, Months

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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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.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Being Positive, Necks

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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.

  John Galt

  Character, Scotland, Two

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• The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

  Ishmael Beah

  Expression, Three, Fifteen

  Ishmael Beah (2014). “Radiance of Tomorrow: A Novel”, p.7, Macmillan

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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.

  Les Miles

  Lsu, Voice, Guy

  "SEC Media Days: Les Miles on Australian accents and Instagram users". Q&A session, www.redandblack.com. Jul 18, 2013.

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• [On The Philippines:] ... eighty dialects and languages are spoken; we are a fragmented nation of loyal believers, divided by blood feuds and controlled by the Church.

  Jessica Hagedorn

  Blood, Church, Loyal

  Jessica Hagedorn (2013). “Dogeaters: A Novel”, p.132, Open Road Media

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