A Quote by Yann Martel

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar-the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.

Yann Martel

Quote Topics

Alien Approach Bane Blessing Colonialism Colour Concern Drive English Exploit Feel Grammar Happy Henry Imposed Incapacity Language Languages Loved Matter Museum New Other Over Overabundance People Qualms Result Robbing Shoulder Size Spelling Terrible Vocabulary Wealth Whom Whose Words Worry Zeal

Quote Author

Yann Martel
Canadian - Author
Born: June 25, 1963

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

Language is very deceiving. In certain languages, there is certain vocabulary that doesn't exist in other languages. It totally changes how people feel about things.

Jenova Chen

It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.

Fred Frith

English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach.

David Crystal

Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.

Louise Erdrich

english doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

James Nicoll

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

Donald E. Westlake

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.

Ashwin Sanghi

When we look at the specific effect of the Internet on language, languages asking the question, 'Has English become a different language as a result of the Internet?' the answer has to be no.

David Crystal

So the language of musical harmony is an absolutely extraordinary one. It's a way of navigating one's emotional frameworks, but without the need to put things into words, and I think that, as with many other languages, it doesn't matter how much you know about a language.

Jacob Collier

In terms of language, English is very dominant vis-Ã-vis African language. That in itself is a power relationship - between languages and communities - because the English language is a determinant of the ladder to achievement.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

I'm German! Actually, I love my countr, ;I love the language. The German language is very special because it is so precise. There is a word for everything. There are so many wonderful words that other languages don't have. It is impressive to have such a rich language, and I love to work in that language.

Sebastian Koch

Learn Languages the Right Way. Language acquisition games and abstract communicative method are bullshit. The second-best way to learn a foreign language is alone in a room doing skull-numbing rote memorization of vocabulary, grammar, key phrases, and colloquialisms. The best way is in bed.

Chuck Thompson

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

Mohsin Hamid

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language - not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

English is such a deliciously complex and undisciplined language, we can bend, fuse, distort words to all our purposes. We give old words new meanings, and we borrow new words from any language that intrudes into our intellectual environment.

Willard Gaylin

A Quote by Yann Martel

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors