Spoken English Quotes

• 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

  Literature, Language, Disadvantages

  53 Copy quote

• Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

  Hermann Hesse

  Communication, Different, Littles

  14 Copy quote

• I don't care how someone lives or how good their spoken English is. I do all of my interviews on Skype text chat - all that matters is their work.

  Matt Mullenweg

  Care, Matter, Skype

  4 Copy quote

• There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

  Annie Dillard

  Children, Long, Age

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.107, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• 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

  Distance, Believe, Simple

  Adam Gopnik (2000). “Paris to the Moon”, Random House Incorporated

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• It is said that the American vocabulary has declined by half in the past few decades. It's a tragic instance of desertification following upon monocultural commodity production, the clear-cutting of written and spoken English.

  Stephanie Mills

  Cutting, Past, Vocabulary

  Stephanie Mills (2003). “Epicurean Simplicity”, p.130, Island Press

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