Quotes About Language

Besides, if I wanted to hear people speaking wall-to-wall French, all I had to do was remove my headphones and participate in what is known as 'real life,' a concept as uninviting as a shampoo cocktail.

In France the most often used word is "connerie," which means "bullshit," and in America it's hands-down "awesome," which has replaced "incredible," "good," and even "just OK." Pretty much everything that isn't terrible is awesome in America now.

I thought about this for days, just as I thought of the special-ed teacher I met in Pittsburgh. You know, I said, I hear those words and automatically think Handicapped, or, Learning disabled. But aren't a lot of your students just assholes? You got it, she said. Then she told me about a kid - last day of class - who wrote on the blackboard, Mrs. J____ is a cock master. I was impressed because I'd never heard that term before. She was impressed because the boy had spelled it correctly.

Use the word 'ya'll' and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack french-kissing an underage goat

It means 'female dog,'" I'd explained to my sisters, "but it also means 'a woman who's crabby and won't let you be yourself.

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps. Sometime me cry alone at night. That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.

I'd asked the same question a few years earlier in Amsterdam and learned that in the Netherlands you're more apt to bring a disease into it. "Like if someone drives in a crazy way, it's normal to call them a cholera sufferer," a Dutch woman told me. "Either that or a cancer whore.

Dad wants to talk about her death—he needs to—but unlike the rest of us, who yak incessantly about our feelings, he has no vocabulary for it and is reduced to the clichés you'd find on a sympathy card. It's like not knowing a language.

Use the word "y'all," and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. "Goddamnit," I whispered. "I knew I forgot something.

Though harsh in other respects, prison would be an excellent place to learn a foreign language - total immersion, and you'd have the new slang before it even hit the streets.

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I'd gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were "stressed out".

A wise man once said that in order to communicate, you have to be able to speak in someone else's language.

Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires.

A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. 'My bad,' for example, and 'I've got your back' and 'You go, girlfriend.' They're the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.

I attribute my wife's language to the fact that she's one-quarter spaniel. She says she's only an eighth, but, come on, the ears say it all. That and her mouth. (The Faithful Setter)

The word love was replaced by a heart shape I'm guessing they'll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.

Boston's That is good is Berlin's Das ist gut. It's an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking, 'Hey, Ich kann do dis.' :D

I've outlawed "meds," "bestie," "bucket list," "dysfunctional," "expat," "cab-sav," and the verb "do" when used in a restaurant, as in "I'll do the snails on cinnamon toast.

Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window.

The Romanians really do lead the world when it comes to cursing. "What have you got for me?" I asked a woman from Transylvania who was now living in Vienna. "Shove your hand up my ass and jerk off my shit," she offered.

Here was a person for whom the word pen had two syllables. Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready—so who was she to advise me on anything?

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.

If something is written in your native language and it's taking you half a year to get through it, unless you're being paid by the hour to read it, I'd say there's a problem.