Quotes About Language

Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over... the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.

The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.

The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes

accent, as many Europeans

Hammett, David Morrell, Michael Crichton, and even Georges Simenon translations.

You know your problem?" I snap at Shark. "You use too many metaphors. Ants, fish, and rabbits, all in the same breath. That's an abuse of the language." Shark smiles. "I never

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second "you.

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second "you." "People lose teeth talking like that." Spade's voice was still amiable though his face had become wooden. "If you want to hang around you'll be polite." The boy repeated his two words.

The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy.

The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning "ability to," and bics, meaning "withstand tremendous boredom

Molly happy see Ammm," she said. The Porpoise language has 237 words that mean "happy," and Molly had actually chosen the one denoting the happiness derived from having one's belly tickled by seaweed.

Molly squeaked and clicked (the clicks were the hardest) something back, which she hoped was "Hello." What she actually said was "My teeth are green," but the porpoise was too polite to point that out.

The best way to learn Japanese is to be born as a Japanese baby, in Japan, raised by a Japanese family.

In our language," he said, "Alf means squid poop.

That got her up on stage pretty quick, and she sang a song, which was in Spanish, so I don't know what it was about, except she seemed to be singing it mainly to Sharisse and it had a word that sounded like "poota" in it a lot.

Culver is a language magnet school. What it's mainly a magnet for, if you want to know the truth, is nerds.

The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night.

All day long I'd biddy-biddy-bum As you can imagine, this unfortunate condition has an adverse impact on Tevye's milkman career, as it seriously hampers his ability to interact with his customers: CUSTOMER: I need two quarts of milk and one pint of cream. TEVYE: Okay, that's two quarts of milk and one pint of boody booboo

The Coca-Cola Company has changed the name of its soft drink in China after discovering the words mean 'bite the wax tadpole' in Chinese.

You may or may not have noticed an overall degradation of the language, and a proliferation of errors of spelling and grammar in even the most official documents?

Kling identifies three primary languages: Liberals see the world as a battle between victims and oppressors. Conservatives see the world as a battle between civilization and barbarism. Libertarians see the world as a battle between liberty and coercion.