Quotes About Language

What was the human animal in the midst of the siege? An herbivore that crawled on all fours, browsing on dirty grasses. A predator that hunted alone or in packs. A social animal that spoke of noble art and wound violin strings from the guts of dead sheep and pigs. A creature with canine teeth for tearing, but with a tongue for speaking. A mouth that could devour or sing.

He says the language is dying. He thinks words are being debased. So he tries to speak entirely in weird words and irony, so no one can simplify anything he says.

While these terms — Bolshevik, Communist, Marxist, socialist, and Soviet — are sometimes used interchangeably, many people have died to make distinctions among them.

he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruins of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash. He

I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in School(TM). On the grounds that the silent 'E' is stupid.

Yes. Just think: the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for "revolution" is "elimination of life".

Ninguna palabra está completa / ni siquiera en alemán que las tiene tan grandes.

De ontdekking van Rome laat je voelen dat Latijn weliswaar een dode taal heet, maar dat het een levende sleutel is om de talloze deuren naar ons eigen Europese culturele verleden te openen, niet op zoek naar eenheid, maar juist tastend naar de rijke verscheidenheid als de essentie van dat Europa.

Like most people who live on the edge, she spoke with two accents, neither authentic.

Ricky Let's drop it. Let's ecks-nay on the becks-nay. Ig-pay atlin-lay. Bobby Will you ut-shay your outh-may Ricky Ayn-saying-ay Bobby I don't know, you're doing it wrong, I don't understand what the hell you're saying. Ricky Onch-pay oo-bay ... ay-bay ay-way Bobby Ut-shay your ace-fay, asshole-ay. Ricky Did you hear that Did you hear what he said Whadaya think of that

The time had come to capture thought once again in a net of words.

In 2016, "Fascism" was searched on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website more often than any other word in English except "surreal," which experienced a sudden spike after the November presidential election.

Ciao, bello!' The coal-eyed beauty who had kissed Jason through the Fiat's window appeared through the crowd, her pretty red mouth smiling. Utterly ignoring Storm, she perched herself on the table next to Jason. 'Ciao, bella,' he smiled. 'Vuoi ballare?' 'She wants me to dance,' he explained to Storm, peering round the girl's adolescent bottom. 'I know,' she replied shortly. 'I've got a degree in Italian.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to begin again? Would I still be the same person if I woke up in a different language and another existence?

Sound had a freedom that no thought could equal because a sound made no absolute claim on meaning. Any word, on the other hand, could be forced to signify its opposite.

The words slid into me, smooth as a polished knife.

When I first started studying Greek, one of my absolute favorite parts was realizing that so many English words had these old, secret roots. Learning Greek was like being given a super-power: linguistic x-ray vision.

But is this not what poetry must do? To say the nothing that cannot be said?

A name is a promissory note that it cannot itself keep.

How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up on shore.

To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.

If only I still had faith in words.

words are but pictures of our thoughts

There are two remaining speakers of Ayapaneco, an indigenous Mexican language; unfortunately, Manuel Segovia and Isidro Velázquez refuse to talk to one another, even though they are neighbors in their little village in the state of Tabasco.