{"quotes":[{"text":"The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.","author":"Kurt Vonnegut Jr.","tags":["dialect","first-language","irish","joseph-conrad","language","mother-tongue","polish","prose","trust","writing","writing-style"],"id":38759,"author_id":"Kurt+Vonnegut+Jr."},{"text":"The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["agnosticism","amateur","antitheistic","apologetics","application","argumentation","atheism","bible","counter-argument","criticism","deceit","development","dialect","discernment","fallacies","false-preaching","false-prophet","false-teaching","falsehood","figurative","foolish","immaturity","improvement","instrument","judgment","knowledge","language","learning","lies","lingo","logic","logical-fallacies","mastering","mastering-oneself","mastering-the-mind","maturity","metaphor","mind","music","philosophy","practice","preacher","professional","prophet","religion","scripture","simile","studying","teacher","theism","theology","truth","wisdom"],"id":45066,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"},{"text":"Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.","author":"Patrick Ness","tags":["accent","dialect","language"],"id":89006,"author_id":"Patrick+Ness"},{"text":"This is one of the consequences of a superior education, you see. In this independent, hundred-per-cent-empowered and fully and totally indigenous blacker-than-black country, a superior education is one that the whites would value, and as whites do not value local languages at the altar of what the whites deem supreme. So it was in colonial times, and so it remains, more than thirty years later.","author":"Petina Gappah","tags":["africa","african-languages","colonialism","dialect","education","language","local-languages","miseducation","race","shona","white-wash","zimbabwe"],"id":94382,"author_id":"Petina+Gappah"},{"text":"What is surprising, even deeply disturbing, is the way that many individuals who consider themselves democratic, even-handed, rational, and free of prejudice, hold on tenaciously to a standard language ideology which attempts to justify restriction of individuality and rejection of the Other.","author":"Rosina Lippi-Green","tags":["accent","dialect","language-ideology","prejudice"],"id":101562,"author_id":"Rosina+Lippi-Green"},{"text":"To creative people, the compendium of the white man's dialect are unfashionable, because their creations are more than what the tongue could say.","author":"Michael Bassey Johnson","tags":["creation","creations","creative","creative-people","creativity","dialect","dictionary","fashion","language","michael-bassey-johnson","non-conformity","speaking","unfashionable","word","words"],"id":178652,"author_id":"Michael+Bassey+Johnson"},{"text":"He’s more a shape in a drape than a hep cat.","author":"Sara Sheridan","tags":["1950s","dialect","fifties","hepcat","humour","language","lingo"],"id":369150,"author_id":"Sara+Sheridan"},{"text":"The goblins have been after me ever since I helped the Coven drive them out of Essex. (They were gobbling up drunk people in club bathrooms, and the Mage was worried about losing regional slang.) I think the goblin who successfully offs me gets to be king.","author":"Rainbow Rowell","tags":["dialect","funny","goblins","humor","m-m-romance","magic","romance"],"id":386378,"author_id":"Rainbow+Rowell"},{"text":"Up and down' is Irish for anything at all--from crying into the dishes to full-blown psychosis. Though, now that I think about, a psychotic is more usually 'not quite herself'.","author":"Anne Enright","tags":["dialect","humor","ireland","irish","language"],"id":415511,"author_id":"Anne+Enright"},{"text":"Regret and remorse” is a dialectic issue about what has been done, about what should have been done and about what should not have been done. ( “Island of regret. Island of remorse” ).","author":"Erik Pevernagie","tags":["dialect","done","island","issue","regret","remorse","should-have"],"id":443624,"author_id":"Erik+Pevernagie"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":11,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}