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. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established, grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies.
Bill Bryson – English Grammar
More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
Bill Bryson – English Language
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
George Eliot – Language
A different language is a different vision of life.
Federico Fellini – Language
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson – Language, Thought
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Samuel Johnson – Language
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
William Hazlitt – Poetry, Language
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
George Bernard Shaw – Language
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James Baldwin – Language
If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.
salman Rushdie – language, power
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
salman Rushdie – Language, Novel
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
salman Rushdie – Language is courage
Language is so important. Up to this time my relationships had been with women who knew little English and of whose language I frequently knew nothing.
Importance of Language
The attitude to English was the exact opposite: any achievement in spoken or written English was highly rewarded.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o – English Language
Language’ is speech or writing viewed ‘objectively, as a chain of signs without a subject.
