A Quote by Bill Bryson

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

Bill Bryson

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Bill Bryson
American - Writer
Born: December 8, 1951

There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

Bill Bryson

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

Bill Bryson

It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!

Richard Lederer

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

Steven Pinker

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

Raymond Chandler

Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.

William Golding

In English, I'm a little bit limited. I speak English as a second language, and that's a little limitation that I have to work around and I have to use it to my favor. So, yes, that's why I end up wanting to do more things in Latin America.

Gael Garcia Bernal

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.

Raymond Chandler

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

Bill Bryson

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.

William Safire

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman.

Robert Graves

I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.

Amos Oz

To read" actually comes from the Latin reri "to calculate, to think" which is not only the progenitor of "read" but of "reason" as well, both of which hail from the Greek arariskein "to fit." Aside from giving us "reason," arariskein also gives us an unlikely sibling, Latin arma meaning "weapons." It seems that "to fit" the world or to make sense of it requires either reason or arms.

Mark Z. Danielewski

English language is the most universal language in history, way more than the Latin of Julius Caesar. Its the most punderful language because its vocabulary has a certain critical mass that makes a lingo good for punning.

Richard Lederer

English language is the most universal language in history, way more than the Latin of Julius Caesar. It's the most punderful language because its vocabulary has a certain critical mass that makes a lingo good for punning.

Richard Lederer

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.