“You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.”
“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”
“I was sitting across from an Englishman, one of those smart people who know how to run things [...] but who now, since the demise of the empire, have nothing to do; they look so sad, sitting on the rubbish heap of history.”
″‘You are wearing handmade loafers, a silk shirt, and three gold signet rings. Your English has a tinge of Oxford about it, and your nails have the soft sheen of the recently manicured. You are not a waiter. You are our contact Nguyen Xuan, and you have adopted this pathetic disguise to discreetly check for weaponry’”
“Why did the English language have so few words for green? Every leaf and every tree had its own shade of green. Another example of how far Nature was still ahead of humans. ”
“With that, Miyax became Julie. She was given a cot near the door in Martha’s little house and was soon walking to school in the darkness. She liked to learn the printed English words in books, and so a month passed rather happily.”
″ ‘Oh, Murder! What was that, Papa!’
‘My child, it was a Motor-Car, A Most Ingenious Toy!
Designed to Captivate and Charm
Much rather than to rouse Alarm
In any English Boy.’ ”
“That is not English, Will. And when we speak to one another, you and I, we do not use English. We use the Old Speech. We were born with it in our tongues. You think you are speaking English now, because your common sense tells you it is the only language you understand, but if your family were to hear you they would hear only gibberish. The same with that book.”
“If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school- with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses- then I am a happy man.”
″ ‘What,’ cried I, ‘were you in the English army?’
‘That was I,’ said Alan. ‘But I deserted to the right side at Prestonpans–and that’s some comfort.’
I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser than say my thought. ‘Dear, dear,’ says I, ‘the punishment is death.’ ”
“Nanny is my nurse
She wears tissue paper in her dress and you can hear it
She is English and has 8 hairpins made out of bones
She says that’s all she needs in this life for Lords sake”