"Dialect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little to tell the story as he told it. But I am aware that I have succeeded very badly; for I am not like my friend in London, who, I verily believe, could give you an exact representation of any dialect he ever heard. I wish I had been able to give a little more of the form of the old man's speech; all I have been able to do is to show a difference from my own way of telling a story. But in the main, I think, I have reported it correctly. I believe if the old man was correct in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... truth of the narrative ceased. Henceforth, it told of only the things of another age, and told them in the dialect of a bygone tongue. It was the official report of what had taken place in Old Russia written involuntarily under the omnipotent but benumbing inspiration of the spirit ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... found; and the judges, poor in the midst of riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion. The subjects of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the barbarous dialect of the Latins was imperfectly studied in the academies of Berytus and Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that idiom was familiar to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been instructed by the lessons of jurisprudence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... incumbent on him to search out some mode of independent subsistence. His youth had been eagerly devoted to literature and music. These had hitherto been cultivated merely as sources of amusement. They were now converted into the means of gain. At this period there were few works of taste in the Saxon dialect. My ancestor may be considered as the founder of the German Theatre. The modern poet of the same name is sprung from the same family, and, perhaps, surpasses but little, in the fruitfulness of his invention, or the soundness of his taste, the elder Wieland. His life was spent in the composition ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... who found them living there in 1595,[10] and by the Belgian explorers who in 1598 collected a short vocabulary of their tongue. This oldest monument of the language has sufficient interest to deserve copying and comparing with the modern dialect. It is ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... works, was a feeling of warm and, as it were, personal affection. With limitless interest and curiosity, I used to hear the Uncle Remus stories from the lips of one of our old family servants, a negro to whom I was devotedly attached. These stories were narrated to me in the negro dialect with such perfect naturalness and racial gusto that I often secretly wondered if the narrator were not Uncle Remus himself in disguise. I was thus cunningly prepared, "coached" shall I say, for the maturer charms of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... clapped their hands, leaped up, fell down, clasped each other in their free arms, cried, laughed, and went to and fro, tossing upward their unfettered hands; but high above the whole there was a mighty sound which ever and anon swelled up; it was the utterings in broken negro dialect of gratitude ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... which having pass'd At length into the limits of the North They came, and Satan to his Royal seat High on a Hill, far blazing, as a Mount Rais'd on a Mount, with Pyramids and Towrs From Diamond Quarries hew'n, & Rocks of Gold, The Palace of great Lucifer, (so call That Structure in the Dialect of men Interpreted) which not long after, hee Affecting all equality with God, 760 In imitation of that Mount whereon Messiah was declar'd in sight of Heav'n, The Mountain of the Congregation call'd; For thither he assembl'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... light cloud passed over his visage, and I heard him mutter to himself in the Scottish dialect, "Beef and pudding! 'tis cauld kail ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... repeated with entire correctness, and with appropriate gestures and emphasis, though in the genuine darky dialect—which seems to be inborn with the pure, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for, in society, what seems, is. Enough that thy colloquies expose thee to scandal. There is but one remedy. Thou must yield thy place to another. It is meet that thou forthwith instruct in that barbarous dialect some matron of unblemished repute and devout aspirations; no mere ignorant devotee, however, but a woman of the world, whose prudence and experience may preserve the holy man from the pitfalls set for him by the unprincipled. Manifestly she must be a married person, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Byron,) "struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seem Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect Celtic, in the sound, and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven."—Notes to the Second Chapter of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... interrogated one of the crofters in a broad Orkney dialect, "where has thoo been wandering sae lang? They was expecting thee mair than a twa week syne. Was thoo thinking o' starving ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... all government. He is also in the last resort a being whose conduct is governed by his opinions. Admit these premises and the way is clear towards perfection. It is a problem which in some form and in some dialect confronts every generation of reformers. We are the creatures of our own environment, but in some degree we are ourselves a force which can modify that environment. We inherit a past which weighs upon us and obsesses us, but in some degree each generation is born anew. Godwin used the new psychology ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the snow, and then started off to show him he must follow. Now a moonlight promenade on the snow, in the morning, with the thermometer several degrees below zero, was not at all to Crip's liking, and he scolded most furiously in his goose dialect, but he took good care to run after his master ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase, (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions,) while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... hurry. They talked freely over their task of dressing and quartering the deer, and often they were so near that Robert could hear distinctly what they said, but only once or twice did they use a dialect that he could understand, and then they were speaking of the great victory of Oswego, in which they confirmed the inference, drawn from the spoils, that they like Tandakora had taken a part. They were in high good humor, expecting ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Annamese and the older autochthonous races, has a population-mass possessing very distinct characteristics, which sharply conflict with Northern traits. Fuhkien province is not only as diversified but speaks a dialect which is virtually a foreign language. And so on North and West of the Yangtsze it is the same story, temperamental differences of the highest political importance being everywhere in evidence and leading to perpetual bickerings and jealousies. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Baldy, and then he lapsed into the Indian dialect. The two talked for a little while, and it was evident that some dispute ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... part. I watched the waiters even more than the guests. I saw that it paid to amuse and to cringe. One particular black man set me crazy. He was intelligent and deft, but one day I caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the clown,—crouching, grinning, assuming a broad dialect when he usually spoke good English—ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more money than any ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... has been on his own so long that he cannot, at this late date, readjust himself to the touch of a helping hand. His mind is uncommonly clear and he speaks with no Negro colloquialisms and almost no dialect. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... make broad Allusions upon any thing that gave the least occasion, than was altogether suitable with the very Good-breeding he shewed in most other things. The Company he kept whilst abroad, had so used him to that sort of Dialect, that he was so far from thinking it a Fault or an Indecency, that he made it a matter of Rallery upon those who could not prevail upon themselves to join in it. As a Man who hath a good Stomach loveth generally to talk of Meat, so in the vigour of ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... marriage has lost the inward and spiritual grace of which the marriage ceremony is the outward and visible sign. In vain do bishops stoop to pick up the discarded arguments of the atheists of fifty years ago by pleading that the words of Jesus were in an obscure Aramaic dialect, and were probably misunderstood, as Jesus, they think, could not have said anything a bishop would disapprove of. Unless they are prepared to add that the statement that those who take the sacrament with their lips but not with ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... its appeal on small private sympathies and understandings and pass-words which leave the world at large cold, or mystified, or even disgusted. Nor is it perhaps uncritical to set down that pre-eminently happy use, without abuse, of dialect, which has attracted the admiration of almost all good judges, to this same humour, warning him alike against the undisciplined profusion and the injudicious selection which have not been and are ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... replied the hero; "but, aw! I dawn't knaw you, do I!" (He spoke for all the world like Lord Foppington in the old play—a proof of the perennial nature of man's affectations. But his limping dialect I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tongue to the last—especially when a meanness or an injustice roused her spirit. She has come handy to me several times in my books, where she figures as Tom Sawyer's "Aunt Polly." I fitted her out with a dialect, and tried to think up other improvements for her, but did not find any. I used Sandy once, also; it was in "Tom Sawyer"; I tried to get him to whitewash the fence, but it did not work. I do not remember what name I called him ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... bubbling spring, and they seemed to fall with a soothing effect upon the irritated spirits of the sons of the forest. What he said Eliot himself could not understand, for the Knight spoke in the peculiar dialect of the Taranteens, which varies considerably from the Algonquin tongue before used. For, besides the general language which received from the French the name of Algonquin, and was nearly universally spoken all along the border of the Atlantic and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... have that watchman discharged. I am a member of the Cresta committee, and he behaved scandalously; but I dare say you forced him into it, so I shall just walk up the hill and give him a few straight words. Probably you don't know the dialect. I've made a point of studying it. If I were you, I should stay where you are until I come back. I want you to come to tea with me at Cresta. There's a particularly good kind of bun in the village, and I think ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... in this meadow?" continued the man, in the half negro dialect common with the whites of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... no greater obstacle to a modern reader than is offered by Chaucer's English, a translation might be a gratuitous task, but the Northwest-Midland dialect of the poem is, in fact, incomparably more difficult than the diction of Chaucer, more difficult even than that of Langland. The meaning of many passages remains obscure, and a translator is often forced to choose what seems the least dubious among ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... is let out in lodgings, furnished or unfurnished, to persons of different descriptions, particularly to the priestesses of Venus. The rooms above, termed mansardes, in the French architectural dialect, are mostly inhabited by old batchelors, who prefer economy to show; or by artists, who subsist by the employment of their talents. These chambers are spacious, and though the ceilings are low, they receive a more ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually to destroy them to the very roots. This whole nation was styled Hycsos, that is, Shepherd-kings: for the first syllable Hyc, according to the sacred dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd; but this according to the ordinary dialect; and of these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that these people were Arabians." Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... across the seas. The general impression seemed to be that Manila was a delightful Spanish city, and that Manila was the Philippines. That there are several thousand little islands in the Philippine group, each harboring its distinct tribe, each with its own dialect and religion, was entirely unknown. Impressed by the nobility of the Moro in contrast to the other tribes of the archipelago, by his unfortunate treatment and his possibilities for development, I found ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... given in summary abstract, told in an ancient Semitic dialect, is inscribed in cuneiform characters upon a tablet of burnt clay. Many thousands of such tablets, collected by Assurbanipal, King of Assyria in the middle of the seventh century B.C., were stored in the ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... all my personages speak in a style too modern, too enlightened for that ancient time. The dialect is not the right one. That simplicity so vividly presented to us by the author of Goetz von Berlichingen, is altogether wanting. Many long tirades, touches great and small, nay entire characters, are taken from the aspect of the present world, and would not answer for the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... biblical narrative and confirms its ethnographical data. The language in which most of our cuneiform inscriptions are written, the language, that is, that we call Assyrian, is closely allied to the Hebrew. Towards the period of the second Chaldee Empire, another dialect of the same family, the Aramaic, seems to have been in common use from one end of Mesopotamia to the other. A comparative study of the rites and religious beliefs of the Semitic races would lead us to the same result. Finally, there is something very significant in the facility with ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... gratitude to Harry for giving him the warning, and promised to defend him should those from whom he had escaped attempt his recapture. To my surprise, Harry was able to make himself clearly understood, though the dialect he spoke evidently differed considerably from that of ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... Reginald has the honour of your service?" asked the Squire, to whom Leonard's broad Somersetshire dialect seemed ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inhabit the eastern side of Formosa, it is said, use a Malay dialect, and have no resemblance whatever to the Mongols. Who can fully explain the little known Ainos, who formerly occupied the whole, or nearly the whole of Japan? The unmistakable traces of Malay influence every where in the islands of the Pacific can have but one meaning. The Malays ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... interesting notes on the extent of the sheep farming upon the Downs crossed in this journey. There is high praise of the ladies of Dorsetshire. There are some pleasant notes upon dialect, including the story, often quoted, of the schoolboy whom Defoe saw and heard reading his Bible in class, and while following every word and line with his eye, translating it as he went into his own way of speech. Thus he turned the third verse of the fifth chapter of Solomon's ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... of the Fuyuge group was collected by the Rev. James Chalmers in 1879. This was called by him Kabana, and was printed in a collection of vocabularies in 1888. [181] From a note on the original MS., the vocabulary was assumed to be the dialect of a village on Mount Victoria (called by Chalmers Mount Owen Stanley). [182] But as Sir William MacGregor pointed out, [183] there are no villages on that mountain, hence Chalmers, in assigning a ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... Anders shouted a peaceful message, and there was much hallooing and gesticulation among the natives, but nothing comprehensible came of it. After a time Anders thought he recognised words of a dialect with which he was acquainted, and to his satisfaction found that they ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... river, which would carry us up almost to the city of Sautipoor, which may possibly have been Satagan. The two first syllables of the name are almost exactly the same, and the final syllable in Sautipoor is a Persian word signifying town, which may have been gan in some other dialect. The entire distance from Balasore, or the port of Orissa, to Piqueno is stated at 170 miles, of which 154 have been already accounted for, so that Piqueno must have been only about 16 miles above Satagan, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... although the Tcherkesses proceed, with the Wogouls and the Ostiakes—we have just seen that the Lesghian and Tchetchentse dialects resemble the Siberian—from one common stock, which at some remote date separated into several branches, of which the Huns probably formed one. The Tcherkesse dialect is one of the most difficult to pronounce, some of the consonants being produced in a manner so loud and guttural that no European has yet been ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in with Mr. Morton Luce in his somewhat frigid and patrician theory of poetry. "Dialect," he says, "mostly falls below the dignity of art." I cannot feel myself that art has any dignity higher than the indwelling and divine dignity of human nature. Great poets like Burns were far more ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... my self one of the first, at least of our Nation, that ever came thus far; it was, you may be sure no small surprize to me to find all the most valluable parts of Modern Learning, especially of Politicks, Translated from our Tongue, into the Lunar Dialect, and stor'd up in their Libraries with the Remarks, Notes and Observations of the Learned Men of that Climate upon ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... that suited his mood, an obscure bettola probably never yet patronized by Englishman, he sat down to a dish of maccheroni and a bottle of red wine. At another table were some boatmen, who, after greeting him, went on with their lively talk in a dialect of which he could understand ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... that he is one of the Kaskayas, whose hunting-grounds are between this and the Platte," observed Uncle Jeff; and approaching the Indian, he stooped over him and spoke a few words in the dialect of the tribe ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... as to become matter of increased sport to such as were ignorant of its cause; and a proposition made at one of the dinners, when he was absent, to write a series of epitaphs upon him (his "country dialect" and his awkward person) was agreed to, and put in practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear to have been Garrick, Doctor Bernard, Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph; but it was complimentary and grave, and hence the grateful ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... mortal man was ever set to blunder through in the dark." His study opened on the garden, from which the sea-view is one of the finest in England. Froude loved Devonshire folk, and enjoyed talking to them in their own dialect, or smoking with them on the shore. He was particularly fond of the indignant expostulation of a poor woman whose husband had been injured by his own chopper, and obliged in consequence to keep his bed. If, she said, it had been "a visitation ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... wife was showing her brother-in-law some of her most treasured bits of china. She was quite calm, as though her knowledge of Italian was fair the Neapolitan dialect was beyond her. Mr Marvel, of course, knew not a syllable of any language but his own, and the slang of Southern gutters was as Greek to Olive. Their placidity amused the Marchese, and so did the thought of the little scene ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... he fell upon the Ambraciots while they were still abed, ignorant of what had passed, and fully thinking that it was their own countrymen—Demosthenes having purposely put the Messenians in front with orders to address them in the Doric dialect, and thus to inspire confidence in the sentinels, who would not be able to see them as it was still night. In this way he routed their army as soon as he attacked it, slaying most of them where they were, the rest breaking away in flight over ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... horses; few of the pools seemed likely to last through the heat of summer. At 1.0 p.m. we came on a party of natives, five of whom came up to us, following us for some distance. As they seemed to prefer mimicking our attempts to speak the York dialect to using their own, we could not obtain much information; they carried kylies and dowaks, but had left their spears and shields with the rest of their party, who did not make their appearance. At 3.0 passed several ridges of red sandstone rocks, the strata dipping to the east-north-east at ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... and some of the members who had not studied any language since the seventies, when they learned the rudiments of German, to read Faust, judged it would be a good idea to hear her for practice. But somebody told her that, and she discouraged it. She was obliged, she said, to skip hastily from one dialect to another and they would only be confused; therefore they thought it better, after all, to remain undisturbed in their respective calm. Jeff sailed securely on through Lincoln's administration to the present day, and took up the tariff even, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... omitted the Master to our names; Mrs. Mitchell by no chance prefixed it. The natural manners of the Celt and Saxon are almost diametrically opposed in Scotland. And had Kirsty's speech been in the coarse dialect of Mrs. Mitchell, I am confident my father would not have allowed her to teach me. But Kirsty did not speak a word of Scotch, and although her English was a little broken and odd, being formed somewhat after Gaelic idioms, her tone was pure and her phrases were refined. The matter was ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... not understand. Did robbers then speak a dialect peculiar to themselves? She became quite curious to hear how Hatszegi would speak to the robbers in their ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... N. language; phraseology &c 569; speech &c 582; tongue, lingo, vernacular; mother tongue, vulgar tongue, native tongue; household words; King's English, Queen's English; dialect &c 563. confusion of tongues, Babel, pasigraphie^; pantomime &c (signs) 550; onomatopoeia; betacism^, mimmation, myatism^, nunnation^; pasigraphy^. lexicology, philology, glossology^, glottology^; linguistics, chrestomathy^; paleology^, paleography; comparative grammar. literature, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mavishes,' Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... They knew no Hindustani. My dialect of Punjabi was as Greek to them. They knew nothing about my clothes, or the suitcase that King and I shared between us and that, according to Yasmini, had been carried by her orders to the palace. The words "King" and "Mahatma" seemed to convey no meaning to them. They made ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... is here to atone for her error, if she has fallen into one," said a quiet, subdued voice, in which the accents of a provincial dialect, however, were slightly perceptible, and which, in its low tones, wanted that silvery clearness that gave so much feminine sweetness to the words of Miss Howard, and which even rang melodiously in the ordinarily vivacious strains ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of tension under the impact of Jacksonian roughness, by tickling its ribs with a quill. Lieutenant Derby turned the searchlight of fun on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... up the rabbit and said several things to the dog in a clear, musical voice. He spoke the guttural, Nez Perce dialect, which is one of the most difficult in the world, and One-eye seemed almost to understand him—and yet there are white boys of fifteen who stumble dreadfully over such easy tongues as ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... enthusiasts beat tom-toms and sang outside. We saw the Sirdar reviewing his Egyptian and Sudanese troops at Khartum, formally inspecting the schools, hospitals, barracks and prisons around Port Sudan, decorating veterans with medals, and addressing in every native dialect the political and religious leaders of the people. We found that no men appreciated the care and skill of the Red Sea Province hospital more warmly than Arabs from the then Turkish ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... disputants. We do not think that Mr. Newman has made out his case that Homer was antiquated, quaint, and even grotesque to the Greeks themselves because his cast of thought and his language were archaic, or strange to them because he wrote in a dialect almost as different from Attic as Scotch from English. The Bible is as far from us in language and in the Orientalism of its thought and expression as Homer was from them; yet we are so familiar with it that it produces on us no impression ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... valley in level layers; or on still summer afternoons, when there came up from the hollow the sounds of hay-making—the scythe shearing through the grass, the clatter of the whetstone, the occasional country voices. The dialect, and the odd ideas expressed in it, worked their elusive magic over and over again. To hear a man commend the weather, rolling out his "Nice moarnin'" with the fat Surrey "R," or to be wished "Good-day, sir," in the high twanging voice of ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... friars, of which they seem never to have tired. Fray Luis now joined Las Casas at Rabinal, from whence he repeated his former visits to various places through-out the neighbouring country. The friars were obliged to learn the language or dialect of Coban in order to enter into relations with its people, the most savage of all the tribes in ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... through another; through ten or a hundred thousand years,—or however long it may be; just as they have been doing in historical times. You find Persian half Arabicized; Armenian come to be almost a dialect of Persian; Latin growing up through English; Greek almost totally submerged under Latin, Slavonic, and Turkish, and now with a tendency to grow back into Greek; Celtic preserving in itself an older than Aryan syntax, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... noticed between the second and the seventh centuries may be allowed to represent that Christianised Latin literature which is the historical bridge between the ancient classical and the modern vernacular literatures. The latter had as yet no existence. In Moesia, on the shores of the Danube, a Gothic dialect had been immortalised by Scripture translations from the Greek as early as the fourth century; but nothing of the kind had as yet appeared under the Latin influence in the West. The Merovingian Franks left no vernacular literature; on the contrary, they rapidly lost their native speech, and ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... nowadays in old Bosley, Miss Myatt?' he asked expansively, trying to drop his American accent and use the dialect. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... look like much and I'm afraid my rendition of cockney dialect into print isn't quite up to Kipling's. But the song had a pretty little lilting melody, and it went big. They made me sing it about a dozen times and were all joining in ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... with the bar began to move. Jack was upon him in a moment, whipping off his girdle, and tying him hand and foot with stout strips of it. Mr. Haydon now began to talk with the native woman. As a rule he had preferred to speak with her through Me Dain, for her dialect contained many words unfamiliar to him. But now Me Dain, their stout-hearted, faithful guide, was gone, and it seemed as if no great interval could elapse before their fate, too, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... the other. I believe with Stevenson that theology, of all subjects, is a suitable topic for conversational discussion, and for the reason he gives: that religion is the medium through which all the world considers life, and the dialect in which people express their judgments. Try to talk for any length of time with people to whom you must not mention creeds, morals, politics, or any other vital interest in life, and see how inane ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... Praxagoras and Philinna (see Epigram XXIII), or as some say of Simichus. (This is plainly derived from the assumed name Simichidas in Idyl VII.) He was a Syracusan, or, as others say, a Coan settled in Syracuse. He wrote the so-called Bucolics in the Dorian dialect. Some attribute to him the following works:- The Proetidae, The Pleasures of Hope ([Greek]), Hymns, The Heroines, Dirges, Ditties, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams. But it known that there are three Bucolic poets: this Theocritus, Moschus of Sicily, and Bion of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Inscriptions of this kind are found only on the solid stone pillars of the more ancient buildings, and not on the stucco, with which at a later period almost everything was plastered. Their antiquity is further certified by some of them being in the Oscan dialect; while those in Latin are distinguished from more recent ones in the same language by the forms of the letters, by the names which appear in them, and by archaisms in grammar and orthography. Inscriptions in the Greek tongue are rare, though the letters of the Greek ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Abhiras or Ahirs still remain. One, known as Ahirwati, is spoken in the Rohtak and Gurgaon Districts of the Punjab and round Delhi. This is akin to Mewati, one of the forms of Rajasthani or the language of Rajputana. The Malwi dialect of Rajasthani is also known as Ahiri; and that curious form of Gujarati, which is half a Bhil dialect, and is generally known as Khandeshi, also bears the name of Ahirani. [22] The above linguistic facts seem to prove only that the Abhiras, or their occupational successors, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... at a'!' Then, again, he said that he could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life. 'They that have had a guid schoolin' and do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something ayont need never be weary.' I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words, something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for me: and that from a man ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that season with the polyglot herd, cockneys of all climes, mainly German, mainly American, mainly English, it appeared as the corresponding sensitive nerve was touched, sounded loud and not sweet, sounded anything and everything but Italian, but Venetian. The Venetian was all a dialect, he knew; yet it was pure Attic beside some of the dialects at the bustling inn. It made, "abroad," both for his pleasure and his pain that he had to feel at almost any point how he had been through every thing ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... ancestors worth reckoning had assumed a mask of comedy. Yet, all said, the Yankee blood cropped out in face and limb and speech—particularly in speech; the folk of the Demijohn District did not employ the dialect of Hosea Biglow, nor a variant of it, but the insistent drawling R to be heard on every second lip was ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... ancient Christian fathers, but Greek coming from men of Hebrew origin; abounding, that is, with Hebraic and Syriac idioms, such as would naturally be found in the writings of men who used a language spoken indeed where they lived, but not the common dialect of the country. This happy peculiarity is a strong proof of the genuineness of these writings: for who should forge them? The Christian fathers were for the most part totally ignorant of Hebrew, and therefore ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... with the appearance of the singing-bird. His feathers had been much ruffled by his bath, so that he seemed to them quite like a tiny Chinese fowl. "He's charming," they said to each other, and began a conversation with him in whispers, using the most aristocratic Chinese dialect: "We are of the same race as yourself," they said. "The ducks, even the Portuguese, are all aquatic birds, as you must have noticed. You do not know us yet,—very few know us, or give themselves the trouble to make our acquaintance, not even any of the fowls, though we are born to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... must understand that these are outlanders who speak a dialect of their own, and are not like any other ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... chosen to write solely in familiar English, rather than in the dialect of his native Dorsetshire, every modern anthology would be graced by the verses of William Barnes, and to multitudes who now know him not, his name would have become associated with many a country sight and sound. Other poets have taken homely subjects ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with his godship before: thou mayest think, therefore, that his dialect sounded oddly in my ears. And then he told me, how often I had thrown cold water upon the most charming flame that ever warmed a lady's bosom, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... shut herself in her room. She did not appear again until the dinner hour, very pale and serious. Servigny had bought from a country storekeeper a workingman's costume, with velvet pantaloons, a flowered waistcoat and a blouse, and he adopted the local dialect. Yvette was in a hurry for them to finish, feeling her courage ebbing. As soon as the coffee was served she ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... the difficulties to which our Consuls are exposed by the applications of sailors, calling themselves Americans. Though the difference of dialect between the Irish and Scotch, and the Americans, is sensible to the ear of a native, it is not to that of a foreigner, however well he understands the language; and between the American and English (unless of particular provinces) there is no difference sensible even to a native. Among ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in 1 act, by Katharine Kavanaugh. 3 female characters. 1 easy interior scene. Time, about 30 minutes. Modern costumes. An excellent opportunity for a clever dialect comedienne, as an old darkey mammy has a very effective role and is quite important in developing ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... by Edna von der Heide, is a delightful piece of verse in modified Scottish dialect, which well justifies the dedication of the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... are not in their nature of a "significant or graceful" sort,[6] and which shocked the fastidious Florentines, the arbiters of Italian taste. It was to avoid these in his own poetry, that Boiardo's countryman Ariosto carefully studied the Tuscan dialect, if not visited Florence itself; and the consequence was, that his greater genius so obscured the popularity of his predecessor, that a remarkable process, unique in the history of letters, appears to have been thought necessary to restore its perusal. The facetious Berni, a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... (official), English (widely spoken), Sranang Tongo (Surinamese, sometimes called Taki-Taki, is native language of Creoles and much of the younger population and is lingua franca among others), Hindustani (a dialect of Hindi), Javanese ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and Standards'; in 1886 he published 'The Catechisms of the Second Reformation'; in 1888 he edited, for the Scottish Text Society, 'The Richt Vay to the Kingdome of Heuine,' by John Gau, the earliest known prose-treatise in the Scottish dialect setting forth the doctrines of the Reformers; and in 1897, for the same Society, 'The Gude and Godlie Ballads,' reprinted from the edition of 1567, with a full and most interesting Introduction. For the Scottish History Society he also edited in 1892 ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... chairman of the meeting, and fully three- fourths of the members of the Senate and the House were present. Miss Drake's speech was a rare combination of originality, humor, arid pathos. Her aptitude at anecdote, her gift for description and dialect had fairly astounded her audience. The applause was so constant and persistent that the brave young speaker had difficulty in pursuing her theme. And when it was over the members of the House and the Senate had ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... on Modern History," new edition of the "Agamemnonian Triology" of Aeschylus, with new readings, "Harmony of Greek Accent and Prosody," "Exercises in Sanscrit for Beginners, on the Ollendorf System," "The Odyssey of Homer translated into the Dublin Irish dialect," "Dissertation on the Symbolical Nature of the Mosaic Economy," "Elements of Logic," "Examination into the Law of Neutrals," "Life of General George Washington," "History of Patent Medicines," "Transactions of the 'Saco Association for ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... old thing took it with a courtesy, the effect of habit, and read it to her daughters as well as her emotion permitted, and the language, which was as new to her as the dialect of Cat Island ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the man lowered his bow and said something in a dialect so uncouth, that the poor girl did not understand him. Indeed, she perceived, to her horror, that he was half-witted, and could ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... information, and Edward, repeating his queries, received a rapid answer, in which, from the haste and peculiarity of the dialect, the word 'butler' was alone intelligible. Waverley then requested to see the butler; upon which the fellow, with a knowing look and nod of intelligence, made a signal to Edward to follow, and began to dance and caper down the alley up which he had made his approaches.—A ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... upon my making some tea for myself, and upon my husband having a glass of beer. About two in the morning she asked for a little champagne; her mind was so clear that, after exchanging a few sentences with her nephew in the Lancashire dialect and drinking her small glass of champagne, she said with a smile, "It's good sleck," and lay still for a while. At three she wanted to be turned on her side, which my husband did with tender care, happy to be able to do something for her better than any one else could do it, as she said. I believe ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... (Emessa) once the Boeotia, Phrygia, Abdera, Suabia of Syria now Halbun (pronounced Halbaun) near Damascus. I cannot explain how this Kuraysh noble (a glorious figure in Moslem history) is claimed by the Afghans as one of their countrymen and made to speak Pukhtu or Pushtu, their rough old dialect of Persian. The curious reader will consult my Pilgrimage iii. 322 for the dialogue between Mohammed and Khalid. Again there is general belief in Arabia that the English sent a mission to the Prophet, praying that Khalid might be despatched to proselytise them: unfortunately Mohammed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... business-like manner, and the Chiefs, after consulting the bands, selected the head men. We then accepted the Chiefs, and I made an explanation of the object of our visit in English, and the Hon. James McKay in the Indian dialect. We severed the questions of terms and reserves, postponing the latter till we had disposed of the former. The Indians gratefully accepted of the offered terms, and we adjourned the conference to enable ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... Pictones of Gaul, also had this p sound. Who, then, were the Picts? According to Professor Rh[^y]s they were pre-Aryans,[29] but they must have been under the influence of Brythonic Celts. Dr. Skene regarded them as Goidels speaking a Goidelic dialect with Brythonic forms.[30] Mr. Nicholson thinks they were Goidels who had preserved the Indo-European p.[31] But might they not be descendants of a Brythonic group, arriving early in Britain and driven northwards by newcomers? Professor Windisch ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... born in 1728.] In it he recommends, as internal medicines, most of the substances commonly used as fertilizers of the soil. His "Album Graecum" is best left untranslated, and his "Zebethum Occidentale" is still more transcendentally unmentionable except in a strange dialect. It sounds odiously to us to hear him recommend for dysentery a powder made from "the sole of an old shoe worn by some man that walks much." Perhaps nobody here ever heard of tying a stocking, which had been worn during the day, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me too many questions at once, my Son. The country of the holy man is a mystery to us all. He speaks the Tuscan dialect well, but with a foreign accent. Nevertheless, though the wine is not of Hungary, it has a pleasant flavour. I wonder how the rogues kept it so snugly from the knowledge and comfort of their ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... properties of imagination, he would have done for the actual, prosaic life of New England what Mr. Hawthorne has done for the ideal essence that lies behind and beneath it. But, with all his marvellous fidelity of dialect, costume, and landscape, and his firm clutch of certain individual instincts and emotions, his characters are wanting in any dramatic unity of relation to each other, and seem to be "moving about in worlds not realized," each a vivid reality in itself, but a very shadow in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... these reasons that this edition was undertaken. The plays chosen, le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, le Legs, and les Fausses Confidences are generally considered his best plays, and are fortunately free from dialect, which, in the mouths of certain characters of l'Epreuve and of la Mere confidente, charming as are these comedies, makes them undesirable for study in college or school. The text of les Fausses Confidences is that of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... Radisson went into the fort, he noticed a soldier among the Dutch. At the same instant the soldier recognized him as a Frenchman, and oblivious of the Mohawks' presence blurted out his discovery in Iroquois dialect, vowing that for all the paint and grease, this youth was a white man below. The fellow's blundering might have cost Radisson's life; but the youth had not been a captive among crafty Mohawks for nothing. Radisson feigned surprise ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... succeeded in getting one into the camp. He was naked, with the exception of a tunic of hare-skins. He told us that there was a river at the end of the lake, but that he lived in the rocks near by. From the few words our people could understand, he spoke a dialect of the Snake language; but we were not able to understand enough to know Whether the river ran in or out, or what was its course; consequently, there still remained a chance that this ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... companies of tragic, melodramatic and comic actors, but it is very rare to find a combination of tragedy and comedy in the same entertainment. There are at present about eighty different troupes of actors in Italy, including those devoted to the marionnette and dialect performances. The principal are the "Salvini," "Ristori," "Majeroni," "Sedowsky," and "Rossi" for tragedy, the "Bellotti Bon" for high comedy, and the "De Mestri" for farce and vaudeville. The "Ristori," "Salvini" and "Rossi" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... exclusive and very important privileges; they wore a peculiar dress; spoke a dialect, if we may believe the chronicler, peculiar to themselves; 54 and had the choicest portion of the public domain assigned for their support. They lived, most of them, at court, near the person of the prince, sharing in his counsels, dining at his board, or supplied from his table. They alone were ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... participated in the erection of a real log house. Most of these old fellows, however, could remember living in such houses in their youth, but they could not understand why any sane man of to-day wanted "to waste so much good lumber," and in the quaint old American dialect still preserved in these regions they explained the wastefulness of my plans and pointed out to me the number of good planks which might be ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... was done, Booz married Ruth, and they had a son within a year's time. Naomi was herself a nurse to this child; and by the advice of the women, called him Obed, as being to be brought up in order to be subservient to her in her old age, for Obed in the Hebrew dialect signifies a servant. The son of Obed was Jesse, and David was his son, who was king, and left his dominions to his sons for one and twenty generations. I was therefore obliged to relate this history of Ruth, because ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... amused by the bits of mimicry that came in, because it was so well done that it inspired everyone with the feeling that mimicry was the one art worth practising; and Mr. Sandys himself launched into dialect stories, in which Somersetshire rustics began by saying, "Hoots, mon!" and ended by saying, "The ould ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... now, washed away by the spring freshets. A glance tells you that the massive-looking piers were hollow, built of one thickness of stone, shell-fashion, and filled with plain earth. Somebody must have cheated. Nothing new in that. They are all thieves nowadays, seeking to eat, as you say in your dialect, with a strict simplicity which leaves nothing to the imagination. At all events this bridge was a fraud, and the peasants clamber down a steep footpath they have made through its ruins, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Thyrza leave the curtains, and sit down to gossip with her. And Thyrza, though perfectly conscious, as the daughter of a hard-working race, that to sit gossiping at midday was a sinful thing, was none the less willing to sin; and she chattered on in a Westmoreland dialect that grew steadily broader as she felt herself more at ease, till Mrs. Melrose could ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Million,' were not aware of his general cultivation of mind. In the dead and living languages, he was equally at home: now he would be speculating on the formation of the Greek chorus, and again mastering some dialect of modern Europe, in order to elucidate the history of the people or their music and poetry. His literary articles were sought after by all the leading journals in Germany and Paris; and his volumes of Sketches of Travel, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... newly-arrived foreigner. In Shanghae or Hong Kong, say to your Chinese ma-foo, who claims to speak English, "Bring me a glass of water," and he will not understand you. Repeat your order in those words, and he stands dumb and uncomprehending, as though you had spoken the dialect of the moon. But if you say, "You go me catchee bring one piecee glass water; savey," and his tawny face beams intelligence as ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... resumed, as, disregarding his latter words, she relapsed into her more familiar dialect. "The Lord help ye! canna ye look at first the ae paper and then the ither? and if they're no alike, mustna the ither be ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... what wondrous beings these? Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught The dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught! Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Are half-way houses on the road ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... original verse of a respectable quality. Yet, notwithstanding his long residence in England, he never mastered the English language so as to be able to use it freely; and in all the anecdotes extant of him he is represented as employing the broken dialect common ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... familiar conversation among them would have been impracticable. The Council Chamber would have been a confused Babel of tongues. But, thanks to the Latin language, which they all spoke (except a few Orientals), their speeches were as plainly understood as if each had spoken in his native dialect. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... even in plausibility such efforts are. It seems certain that 'Hesiod' stands as a proper name in the fullest sense. Secondly, Hesiod claims that his father—if not he himself—came from Aeolis and settled in Boeotia. There is fairly definite evidence to warrant our acceptance of this: the dialect of the "Works and Days" is shown by Rzach [1103] to contain distinct Aeolisms apart from those which formed part of the general stock of epic poetry. And that this Aeolic speaking poet was a Boeotian of Ascra seems even more certain, since ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of the Manuscript, and particulars relating to the authorship and dialect of the present work, the reader is referred to the preface to ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... Roman remains. After anchoring off Curzola for a night, we came to Ragusa, where we stopped two days. At Zara and Sebenico we had opportunities of seeing the Morlaccian race. These are the rural inhabitants of Dalmatia, speaking a Sclavonic dialect, while in the towns they pride themselves on their Venetian origin and language. Amongst these peasants were the noblest specimens of the human kind I have ever seen. Of stature almost gigantic, and of the amplest development of chest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... seven years, and curses dreadfully about the child. The poor woman spoke to Swanson last week, asking him to see if we wouldn't take this one to raise. Swanson is sure that if we took it now we could be practically certain that it would never acquire the Swedish dialect. Of course—" ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... by Aristotle the counterpart of dialect and that especially because it teaches the manner by which enthymemes may be utilized in communal matters, without a doubt poetic is also to be thought a part of logic, because it discloses the use of examples in fictitious matters.... But rhetoric and poetic seek not only to ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... head, for, as I was to find out, the Morattoes, to which nation he belonged, speak a different dialect of their own. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... to hear his judgment of my Greek dialect; he called it 'very beautiful and very funny'; that is, no doubt, because I am apt to mix up too much of the old Greek, which seems ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... cosmopolitan, and managed to get the truth out of this confusion of cockney, Irish, and Yankee dialect. In fact, at the first moment, he had recognized Matthew Stacy and Harriet Long in the persons who claimed his acquaintance, and they stung his memory ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... but there is internal evidence for thinking that part of the poem could not have been composed before 500 A.D. Ten Brink, a great German authority, thinks that Beowulf was given its present form not far from 700 A.D. The unique manuscript in the British Museum is written in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Goodness only knows what arrant nonsense he talked, a sort of gorgeous mix-up of ecclesiastical learning, interspersed with peasant expressions, not even in decent Russian, but in some outlandish dialect, but he took one by storm with his enthusiasm—went straight to the heart. There he stood with flashing eyes, the voice deep and firm, with clenched fist—as though he were made of iron! No one understood what he was saying, but everyone bowed down ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... apparition with their brothers, and bade them go home, as it was getting late. At first, we and the by-standers drove them off; but afterwards, as they would not mind, and only went on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got angry, and kept calling the boys—they appeared to us to have been drinking rather too much at the Hermaea, which made them difficult to manage—we fairly gave way and ...
— Lysis • Plato
... and nation gives zest to the pursuit of mirth. We ape the old, but fashion its semblance to suit our livelier fancy. We moralize in our jesting like the Turk, but are likely to veil the maxim under the motley of a Yiddish dialect. Our humor may be as meditative as the German at its best, but with a grotesque flavoring all our own. Thus, the widow, in plaintive reminiscence concerning ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... accomplishments, was a born linguist, and could speak with fluency in several languages, even the dialect of the Mosquito Indians. He was once captured by the Spaniards, and taken to Havana, but escaped with a few other prisoners in a canoe, seized a piragua, and with this captured a sloop employed in the turtle trade, and by gradually taking larger and ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... hag addressed them was a strange and barbarous Latin, interlarded with many words of some more rude, and ancient dialect. She did not stir from her seat, but gazed stonily upon them as Glaucus now released Ione of her outer wrapping garments, and making her place herself on a log of wood, which was the only other seat he perceived at hand—fanned with his breath the embers into a more glowing flame. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Hercules because he has eaten all our dinners, I shall be quite willing to have him, for he is a dzear ole loveykins, wasn't ums?" (This, O my immaculate and dignified sire, which I transcribe with faithful undeviation, appears to be the dialect of a remote province, spoken only by maidens—both young and of autumnal solitude—under occasional mental stress; as of a native of Shan-si relapsing without consciousness into his uncouth tongue after passing a lifetime ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Sir Philip would arrive: he was not disappointed; Sir Philip came, and, with address which lady Catherine would perhaps have admired, Archibald entered into conversation with the young baronet, if conversation that might be called, which consisted of a species of fashionable dialect, devoid of sense, and destitute of any pretence to wit. To Forester this dialect was absolutely unintelligible: after he had listened to it with sober contempt for a few minutes, he pulled Henry away, saying, "Come, don't let us waste our time here; let us go to the brewery that you ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... bear a good character for honesty, though not for sobriety or chastity, virtues wholly unknown at Wawa; but they are merry, good natured, and hospitable. They profess to be descended from the people of Nyffee and Houssa, but their language is a dialect of the Youribanee; their religion is a mongrel mahommedism grafted upon paganism. Their women are much better looking than those of Youriba, and the men are well made, but have a debauched look; in fact, Lander says, he never was ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish |
