President Bush said that if illegal immigrants want citizenship, they'd have to do three things: pay taxes, hold meaningful jobs, and learn English. Bush doesn't meet those qualifications.
Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes - the whole bag of tricks.
My father's mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother's cup and saucer.
I am not accustomed to pay fulsome compliments to the English, by telling them that they are superior to all the world; but this I can say, that they do not deserve the name of cowards.
Isaac Singer always wrote in Yiddish. He was so unsure of his English at the beginning that he was easy to edit and he learned fast.
A number of Americans were used, most often unwillingly, by North Korea to arm spies with English-speaking skills so they could target American interests in South Korea and beyond.
During the 1980s, when Japan's economy was roaring and people were writing books with titles like 'Japan is Number One,' most Japanese college students didn't make the effort to become fluent in English.
It may be that is as perfect, word for word, just in terms of English; but is deeper, richer, wider – and is comic, whereas is a tragic novel. And I think all great art is comic art. ( )
The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration.
I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian.
If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
After moving to England I did some recording and eventually formed an English band, this was together for quite a few years with only a keyboard replacement. The band had no name, just my name.
I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.
There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.
And I don't really like golf. I know a lot of English footballers play, but I know that if I go with the club to play, sooner or later I will end up trying to smash the ball with my foot.
I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math.
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?
Before I joined the project most of the English people with whom I had made personal contacts were left wing and affected to some degree or other by the same kind of philosophy.
I went to UC Berkeley. I graduated in 1976, immediately moved to L.A. with a degree in English - which did no more for you then than it does for you now - then sold real estate and did theater for nine years.
I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!
