Quotes About Language

Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

I analyse in my own way, in very simple, no-jargon language. If somebody is talking in very complicated way, I never like that.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

In using the English language to create an entirely new art form, the pioneers of Hip Hop created a vessel that grew to impact nearly every facet of American culture.

When a kid can understand that a word can mean two things, there's some real thinking going on. They have a vested interest in finding out what a word means, because it's the punch line to a joke.

National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.

As veterans we should be smarter about how we talk about things.

When our veterans walk into any VA facility, they converse with men and women who speak the unique language of military service.

If you present your dog to a veterinarian with the instruction to put him to sleep, you would normally mean something very different than you would upon taking your wife or husband to an anesthesiologist with the same words.

My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.

Freedom is the thing that has attracted me most to jazz. Within improvisation, you're really able to express something that maybe I'm not so adept at expressing via language. So I develop a language through the instrument to tell stories. So it's kind of this freedom of thought and freedom of expression that kind happens.

Computers can see, and understand what people say via speech recognition.

My work, my love of words, became my refuge, both when I was working on bilingual dictionaries for Oxford University Press and then via my involvement with 'Countdown' - and now 'Catsdown,' as I call it.

I was born in Honduras, and everything there is really chill, and people don't worry about having to get something overnighted by FedEx. Maui has that same sort of vibe, but everyone speaks English.

Dabbling with Tagore was always scary. It happens with masters, with contemporary poets you know their vibes and their meaning. Tagore was different; his aura and the feel of his language was different.

Most Americans don't even understand what I'm saying in my records, but they pick up on the vibe, the vibration.

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand.

My dog is vicious to the uninvited guest, lavishly affectionate to the invited one, and so freakishly acute that he has mastered the English language.

'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.

When we're the victims of insulting language and attacks, it's obviously going to evoke a response.