“Standard languages are inventions, most of them confined to a recent period in human history. They are codes that give access not to clear thinking and basic decency but to the structured parts of our lives such as job interviews, political speeches, literary essays, novels, and the like. They signal education and learning, but they are not the same thing as education and learning.”

“Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.”

“His captivating speech came not from his grammar or vocabulary but from the joy he took in wielding them well.”

“I'd start to explain with the outward sheepish and inner pride of the nerd.”

“Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is somewhat more like classical composition, where established forms and conditions will hold greater sway.”

“To most of the general public, language comes down less to wonder than a rather censorious bifurcated sentiment – namely, that the vast majority of the world's humans either speak and something primitive or speak something badly.”

“Too many people are too angry about language too much of the time. This time could be better spent listening, learning, and enjoying the vast variety of human language around them.”

“Americans tend to use "nation" as a synonym for "country." But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not.”

“If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.”

“Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity.”

“Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself.”