Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as languag...
Katten zijn slimmer dan honden. Je krijgt acht katten nooit zo gek dat ze een slee door de sneeuw gaan trekken. (Or, in English: Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.)
I played a little basketball, but basketball interfered with theater season. That's when we did our term plays and did nutshell versions of Shakespeare for English classes. And, believe me, I got a fair amount of looks from the guys on the team. 'You...
Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.
When I was living in China, I learned to make things hyper-explicit because often they were being read by people whose command of English kept them from picking up what I thought were obvious signals.
When I first started writing, I was living in England and I had that uniquely English sense of sarcasm, which has definitely seemed to have left me. I am a naturalized American and my sensibility has become far more American.
Ah, Scotland. I am three-parts Scottish and terribly proud of it, although maybe we should divide it into eighths, because my two-eighths are Danish and English, the Lumley part. But the bulk of the rest of me is Scottish - and Scottish ministers esp...
As languages go, English is pretty user friendly. If you look at a tiny language spoken somewhere that most of us have never heard of, chances are it's going to be so complicated that you have a hard time imagining how people can walk around speaking...
For the first time since 2007 there is political momentum behind fixing the immigration system. President Obama in his State of the Union speech reached out to the right-wing by saying illegal immigrants seeking citizenship will have to pay taxes, le...
Otto: You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole. Archie: How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you? Otto: You are the vulgarian, you fuck.
Prince Feisal: Which is why my father made this war upon the Turks. My father, Mr Lawrence, not the English. But my father is old and I... I long for the vanished gardens of Cordoba. However, before the gardens must come the fighting.
Prince Feisal: And I must do it because the Turks have European guns. But I fear to do it. Upon my soul I do. The English have a great hunger for desolate places. I fear they hunger for Arabia.
[Duncan aims a pistol at Hawkeye] Hawkeye: Haven't you got anything better to do on the lake today, Major? Duncan: [puts away his pistol] When you fall back into English hands I'll have you hanged!
Macaulay Connor: My father was a history teacher. Tracy Lord: English history has always fascinated me. Robin Hood, Cromwell, Jack the Ripper. Where did he teach? Your father I mean.
[first words, handwritten, from English subtitles] Benjamín Esposito: He ran to the end of the train and watched as her figure, once gigantic, now shrank in his eyes, but grew more than ever in his heart.
George: The bathroom's just down the hall, if you'd like to take a shower. Kenny: Aren't you taking a shower too, Sir? George: Oh, I'm fine, I'm English, we like to be cold and wet.
[Sending English Bob on his way after beating and jailing him] Little Bill Daggett: I suppose you know, Bob, if I ever see you again I'm just going to start shooting and figure it was self-defense.
Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. ...
When I was in college, I did do some writing of poetry, somewhat inspired, I think at that time, by Carl Sandburg, because English was still relatively new to me, and Sandburg, of course, wrote in a very easy-to-understand, very colloquial and inform...
Madrid is not as big as London, but it is true when you are coming from a big city like Madrid, nothing is going to surprise you, and I am very happy to move to a city like London. It is a big city, and you can do everything you want with the respect...
We have Al Jazeera Arabic news, Al Jazeera English news, of course; we have three sports channels, and we have Al Jazeera Mubasher, which is a live channel that broadcasts live press conferences and symposiums and meetings. And, of course, we have Al...
