Why no s for two deer,but an s for two monkeys?Brother Quang saysno one knows.So much for rules!Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake.

When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film...

full English breakfast,” which consisted of tea, orange juice, cookies, oatmeal, granola, berries, bananas, croissants, grapes, pineapples, prunes, yogurt, five kinds of cold cereal, eggs, hash browns, back bacon, sausage, smoked salmon, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans,...

I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

Whenever I write a paragraph in English, I first check it with the Google Translator, and most often it says no language detected.

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual...

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won’t go away.

English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one...

Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg’s quarterly Grand Street in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened...

age” whatsoever.

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed.

I’m not a salsa singer who wants to sing in English, and I’m not this American kid who wants to sing Spanish.

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

I remember the very day, sometime during the first two weeks of my five-year amorous sojourn in Brutland, when I was made privy to one of the most arcane of their utterings. The time was...

At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, “Mythology and Archetypal Experience,” confounded me. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then

Real love is booty grabbin

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.

I was well warned about English food, so it did not surprise me, but I do wonder sometimes, how they ever manage to prise it up long enough to get a plate under it.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that,...

Delight is délice, délit is a misdemeanour”Well, it’s bloody close…”Well, they often are….

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.

I feel very English in a suit. There’s something about being in a suit abroad, particularly in America, that feels empowering.

My scary strange English shall only be counted as my English problem.

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.

English is not my first language.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a...

When in doubt about who’s to blame. Blame the English.

Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home’ is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it...

I used to have a pony but I outgrew it and I do dream that one day I will live in the country and have lots of horses and be like a proper English lady...

She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee’s knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from...

We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.

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...

I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.

I know your head aches. I know you’re tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher’s window. But think what you’re trying to accomplish – just think what you’re dealing...

I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened ‘Citizen Kane’ for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.

The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.

I know my own heart to be entirely English.

I’d studied English since the first grade but considered it a murky language, one whose grammar seemed to have been made up on the fly

If water was beer I’d be a teetotaler

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to...

I refer to myself as he, the third person, because the first two people are out on a date. They probably expect me to pick up their tab.

I’m not very good at standard English.

Like so many colours, like so many flavours, like so many fragrance, English grammar should be a personal choice.

Libraries are always bigger on the inside because every book has an entire word inside of it.

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like...

I’m a man of leisure. That’s because I have an English degree and can’t get a job.

I’m bilingual, speaking English and body language. I prefer the latter, because I can speak it silently and without listening and while my back is turned.