Quotes About Pronunciation

#1. Poetry's the speech of kings. You're one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
's been dubbed by [Us] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [Us]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.

Tony Harrison

#2. Pronunciation has made many an innocent word sound like a doctor's orders for a stomach pump ...

Zelda Fitzgerald

#3. Yiddish has a down-to-earth quality that makes it remote from high-flown rhetoric, and it has a catch-as-catch-can charm derived from its stunning variety-of syntax, spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary-from region to region.

Israel Shenker

#4. Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English.

James F. Cooper

#5. He said "cool" like I say a Spanish word when I'm not sure of the pronunciation.

Kelley Armstrong

#6. Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

Bill Bryson

#7. My uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but my pronunciation isn't terrible.

Moby

#8. After using four different languages on an album, it's tough to decide which one I'm gonna actually learn to speak. I always study the lyric, make sure I know what I'm singing, and try to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible.

Josh Groban

#9. If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation.

Charles Saatchi

#10. The mere pronunciation of the word luxurious feels lush, luxuriant.

Lady G

#11. Set a page in Fournier against another in Caslon and another in Plantin and it is as if you heard three different people delivering the same discourse - each with impeccable pronunciation and clarity, yet each through the medium of a different personality.

Beatrice Warde

#12. At acting school people didn't speak like me. It was all received pronunciation - 'ow now brown cow.'

Ray Winstone

#13. I think the first time I was ever really conscious of the difference between people's voices was that my mother's voice was so soft and gentle and her pronunciation was so perfect.

Marian Seldes

#14. I think my style as far as vocal delivery and even down to the pronunciation of certain words is so deliberate.

Miguel

#15. Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'It's like . . . Birmingham.

Natasha Pulley

#16. Company names without clear pronunciation or spelling won't last.

David Rusenko

#17. Looking at each other, something made sense that hadn't made sense before...I still don't know what it is or was about him, about us together (his pronunciation), that made us bind so decisively, two indecisive people so clear, for a time, about each other.

Catherine Lacey

#18. Punctuation is the art of dividing a written composition into sentences, or parts of sentences, by points or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense, and an accurate pronunciation require.

Lindley Murray

#19. One of the things that I'm realizing is that in voice-over work, you have to actually do more work with your facial muscles and your mouth. You have to kind of exaggerate your pronunciation a little bit more, whereas with live action, you can get away with mumbling sometimes.

Mark Valley

#20. FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.

Ambrose Bierce

#21. Many lyricists rhyme as they pronounce, and their pronunciation is simply horrible. They can make "home" rhyme with "alone," and "saw" with "more," and go right off and look their innocent children in the eye without a touch of shame.

P.G. Wodehouse

#22. I have good pronunciation no matter what language I speak. Maybe it's because my specialties are rapping and imitating others

G-Dragon

#23. My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision.

Stephen Colbert

#24. In classes, the more lively and uninhibited ones will "suck away the air" from those with a more passive nature, despite all the efforts of the teacher. It is also a special danger in large groups that you will hear your fellow students' bad pronunciation more than the teacher's perfected speech.

Kato Lomb

#25. His English was exceptional. There was a glottal sound in his voice, but it was not harsh. I'd often asked him to help me with my sparse Arabic, trying to get my pronunciation of this or that word right. "Shukran." "Afwan." "Qumbula." Thank you. You're welcome. Bomb.

Kevin Powers

#26. To American ears, the Filipino pronunciation of the word "evacuate" sounded more like "bokweet." They soon further Americanized it to "buckwheat," which would become guerilla slang meaning to place as much distance between oneself and the Japanese as possible.

John D. Lukacs

#27. They have a lot of trouble with pronunciation, because they can't move their jaw muscles, because of malnutrition caused by wisely refusing to eat English food, much of which was designed and manufactured in medieval times during the reign of King Walter the Mildly Disturbed.

Dave Barry

#28. Thinking can change through the pronunciation of the word of God in your life , because it contains enough strength and energy to change your sub-consciousness

Sunday Adelaja

#29. Dance Like A Pronunciation

Gagan Khiwani

#30. And in his third essay Herodius (not Herodotus, a mistaken pronunciation, perhaps) said 'We can contend with the evil that men do in the name of evil, but heaven protect us from what they do in the name of good.'

Richard Boone

#31. His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

Mary Antin

#32. They have learned our language and pronunciation, and write as well as we do, and even better; for they are so bright that they learn everything with the greatest ease.

David Barrows

#33. Even after all these years, she still said the word "gig" self-consciously, in the same way that she always said "croissant" with the proper French pronunciation, but with an apologetic, self-deprecating look to make up for her pretentiousness.

Liane Moriarty

#34. I work with my acting coach to help me get into character and do pronunciation drills and tongue twisters to help me deliver lines.

Quvenzhane Wallis

#35. But perhaps nothing speaks more clearly for the absurdities of English pronunciation than that the word for the study of pronunciation in English, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways.

Bill Bryson

#36. Grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here, - if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it.

Charles Dickens

#37. Command of English, spoken or written, ranks at the top in business. Our main product is words, so a knowledge of their meaning and spelling and pronunciation is imperative. If a man knows the language well, he can find out about all else.

William Feather

#38. The pronunciation of both Sami and Portuguese languages is strikingly similar: the Portuguese evolved from folksy Latin while the Sami evolved from reindeers' howling.

Arto Paasilinna

#39. Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.

Plutarch

#40. Art is the body's pronunciation of the soul.

Michael Gungor

#41. Just as a poet often has license from the rules of grammar and pronunciation, we should like to ask for 'physicists' license from the rules of mathematics in order to express what we wish to say in as simple a manner as possible.

Richard P. Feynman

#42. Finance is the art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager

Ambrose Bierce

#43. Remember that lettuce doesn't grow on a spruce; and it also doesn't rhyme with it.

Jakub Marian

#44. Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.

Jakub Marian

#45. Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words "village" and "age" whatsoever.

Jakub Marian

#46. HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.
NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.

George Bernard Shaw

#47. When I was doing preliminary research on this case, I remembered the story about Tlazolteotl.' [Mulder] glanced at the old archaeologist. 'Am I pronouncing it correctly? It sounds like I'm swallowing a turtle.

Kevin J. Anderson

#48. Most of the people who have verbally asserted that 'there is no master of pronounciation' have intentionally made a claim and unintentionally made their claim believable. (It is 'pro-nun-ciation' not 'pro-noun-ciation'.)

Mokokoma Mokhonoana