Quotes About Language

Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Jesus was no school-man, was no ecclesiastic, was no heresiarch. He spoke the language and the truth and the religion of a simple, artless, deep-centered representative of universal humanity--true always, everywhere, and for all.

He spoke that refined French in which our grandparents not only spoke bit thought...

Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified the word "never." .... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a.

I'm not a goose, you're the gooses for crying over nothing

The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world.

Why are you sad?" "Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings

Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words that have a still less clear meaning and therefore can easily be plugged into any theory.

You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you're a fool three times as foolish,

Meditations or discussions about art are the most useless pastimes known. Those who really know art know that art can speak well with its own language, and that to speak about art with words is useless. Most people who speak about art do not understand or feel real art.

Todo se hacía con las manos limpias, con camisas planchadas, con palabras francesas y, sobre todo, en la más alta sociedad, es decir, con la aquiescencia de las personas más influyentes.

Once the Yankees arrived, masters and mistresses detected examples of such behavior almost everywhere—in the defection of the favorites, in the demeanor and language of the slaves who remained, in their refusal to submit to punishment, in their failure to obey orders promptly (or at all), and, most frequently, in their unwillingness to work "as usual.

Lumea este sus?inut? de rostirea cuvintelor.

Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

The totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community is the language of that speech community.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

Svaki ?ovek govori jezikom svoga oca.

It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder. — Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game . (Vintage; Reprint edition October 14, 2003) Originally published January 1st 1963.

Whether it's trying to convince others that something is more true, more virtuous, or more desirable--all communication is rhetoric in action.

The difficulty in making sense of even simple speech is well appreciated by computer scientists who struggle to create machines that can respond to natural language. Their frustration is illustrated by a possibly apocryphal story of the early computer that was given the task of translating the homily "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." into Russian and then back to English. According to the story, it came out: "The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.

The language and themes of the classics are too difficult for today's students to grasp; one does not teach Shakespeare to savages, or to civilized children being turned into savages.

L'italiano: ero piuttosto debole in italiano. Ma, come vede, non è poi stato un gran guaio: sono qui, procuratore della Repubblica...». «L'italiano non è l'italiano: è il ragionare» disse il professore. «Con meno italiano, lei sarebbe forse ancora più in alto».

Ecco che lei torna alle parole che decidono, alle parole che dividono: migliore, peggiore; giusto, ingiusto; bianco, nero. E tutto invece non è che una caduta, una lunga caduta: come nei sogni...