Famous quotes containing the words standard, german and/or speakers:
“This unlettered mans speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as It will pay. It suggests that the one great rule of compositionand if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on thisis, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894)
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the creativity of language, that is, the speakers ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are familiar.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)