Quotes About English Grammar

#1. English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

Bill Bryson

#2. Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!

Roald Dahl

#3. I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period.

Robert Burchfield

#4. The chief characteristic of English grammar is the way words are arranged within sentences, and the technical term for this process is syntax. It

David Crystal

#5. The rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.

Ben Aaronovitch

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

Megha Khare

#7. I had English grammar book and started to teach myself. I read 'Catcher in Rye,' in Russian. I was amazed at freedom in 'Catcher in Rye!' Freedom to have those perceptions of life!

Roustam Tariko

#8. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

Bill Bryson

#9. I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.

Carol Berg

#10. Yes I am aware of the rules.
Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.
Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.
That gives my soul its melodies.

Malebo Sephodi

#11. 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 dialect spoken in continental North America.

William Labov

#12. The English language is a work in progress. Have fun with it.

Jonathan Culver

#13. Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.

John McWhorter

#14. Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

Robert Graves

#15. A woman who is praying and a woman who is having fun, they both say " Oh My God", the only difference is how they pronounce it.

M.F. Moonzajer

#16. I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
The past, present, and future walk into a bar - it was tense.

Kelli Russell Agodon

#17. Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

Richard Chenevix Trench

#18. 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

Sara Novic

#19. George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.

Oscar Wilde

#20. Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory ...

John Muir

#21. What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

Lynne Truss

#22. I am reminded that while New Yorkers say "standing on line," the rest of the English-speaking world says "standing in line.

Jeffrey Steingarten

#23. I won't lie!
Probably from books you have saw that I'm not good at English, probably because I don't live in such country which this language is important or let's say to be native. But as for now I can't do a lot of for that!

Deyth Banger

#24. Princeton applicants had to know Virgil, Cicero's orations, and Latin grammar and also had to be 'so well acquainted with Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English.

Ron Chernow

#25. As a text, the Quran is more than the foundation of the Islamic religion; it is the source of Arabic grammar. It is to Arabic what Homer is to Greek, what Chaucer is to English: a snapshot of an evolving language, frozen forever in time

Reza Aslan

#26. If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is when we learn all these fantastic stories. Feeding the imagination is what makes a subject come alive.

Daniel Tammet

#27. Pidgin, pidgin everywhere. A peculiarity of dropping the connective, the article, of translating literally, of using present for past, present for future. We Filipinos did not speak pidgin. Our English was straight from the grammar texts.

Gilda Cordero-Fernando

#28. As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning.

Frederick Lenz

#29. Problem was, all this is new. In English at school we study a grammar book by a man named Ronald Rideout, read Cider with Rosie, do debates on fox-hunting and memorize 'I Must Go Down to the Seas Again' by Jason Masefield. We don't have to actually think about stuff.

David Mitchell

#30. I was sent to a school with bosses for teachers- no Twain, only cane; check your dick you harry, no Dickens either, No Tom Sawyers no David Copperfields only Webster, master it for grammar, the Wren with a dash of Martini-Drink deep.

Aporva Kala

#31. A schoolchild should be taught grammar
for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

E.B. White

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

M.F. Moonzajer

#33. Quotation is a noun. Quote is a verb.

Eusebius Clay

#34. The Essentials of English, book of choice of the older boys at St. Faith's for spanking the younger boys with, leaving a particular broad-natured pain ever afterwards associated with grammar.

Ali Smith

#35. When it comes to the college essay, feel free to break some rules. Many still apply, of course: you need to watch your grammar and spell everything correctly. Sentence structure still matters. But the formula that got you A's in English can be a straitjacket when you're writing your college essay.

Cassie Nichols

#36. Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar.

Robert Breault

#37. English doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

James Nicoll

#38. Despite centuries of English literature, the most famous split infinitive in all of history comes from Star Trek.

R. Curtis Venture

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

Thanhha Lai

#40. Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can't talk the Queen's English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face.

Rick Yancey

#41. Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.

William Safire

#42. I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.

Bernadette Devlin

#43. Polish has developed unimpeded; someone put their foot out and tripped English. The human grammar is a fecund weed, like grass. Languages like English, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese are mowed lawns, indicative of an interruption in natural proliferation.

John McWhorter

#44. And then, this she offered to me, my one truth: "Our language," she said, "is not spoken, but sung ... Not simply words ... and grammar ... but melody. It was hard ... thus ... to learn English ... this language of wood. For the people of your nation, Octavian, all speech is song.

M T Anderson

#45. The English Language is my bitch. Or I don't speak it very well. Whatever.

Joss Whedon

#46. I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman.

Robert Graves

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

Mark Twain

#48. Muriel, my mother, was my main confidant. She was a teacher of English at Watford grammar school but took a break while my sister Madeleine and I were children. She held court in the kitchen, and we talked about everything.

John Sulston

#49. In an idealized world, we would all be able to do what our English teachers told us to do, which is to write beautiful prose where enthusiasm is conveyed by word choice and grammar.

Will Schwalbe