Quotes About Language

He had never really mastered English, but he'd studied enough to have a healthy fear of its random severity, the senseless brutatlity of its conjugations; it was unpredictable, like a cross-bred dog.

He had never really mastered English, but he'd studied enough to have a healthy fear of its random severity, the senseless brutality of its conjugations; it was unpredictable, like a cross-bred dog.

Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them, they lose their value, just like money. They begin to mean nothing. Use 'beautiful' to describe a sandwich and the word means nothing. Since the war, there is no more room for inflated language. Words and feelings are small now—clear and precise. Humble like dreams.

My grandfather said white people can't exist without speaking. He said they're all just imitations of each other, so it's like they have to speak to distinguish themselves.

Like, you just did not expect to feel this way but you do, and it's what writers for centuries have called "melancholia" but because you don't read books, your language is limited.

What is meant by 'nut bag'? Is that a testicular reference or merely the identification of a satchel of cashews or pecans?

she loathed all the IM and texting abbreviations and acronyms. She was a snob like that

You know I have trouble with colloquialisms, so I resent your shocked reaction.

Platypus? I thought it was pronounced platymapus. Has it always been pronounced platypus?

When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the life, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds. When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. Your breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.

Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.

What does a word mean? And a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person, is boundless, ineffable.

It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the word for yesterday, kal, was also the word for tomorrow. In Bengali one needed an adjective, or relied on the tense of a verb, to distinguish what had already happened from what would be.

Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I

A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance. To write in a new language, to penetrate its heart, no technology helps. You can't accelerate the process, you can't abbreviate it. The

I just wanted to go home, to the language in which I was known, and loved.

Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I'll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn't that be the point of all this? I don't think so. When I read in Italian, I'm a more active reader, more involved, even if less skilled. I like the effort. I prefer the limitations. I know that in some way my ignorance is useful to me.

Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge—she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind. It was easier to turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one that had no claim whatsoever.

In a sense, I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.

Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it's tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian

When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You

Without language you can't feel that you have a legitimate, respected presence. You are without a voice, without power.

In Bengali class, Gogol is taught to read and write his ancestral alphabet, which begins at the back of his throat with an unaspirated K and marches steadily across the roof of his mouth, ending with elusive vowels that hover outside his lips

avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione. —ANTONIO TABUCCHI