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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Each dancer has a different dialect that they speak.

  Jon M. Chu

  Dancer, Different, Speak

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