Quotes About Language

Under Saddam Hussein, speaking Kurdish was against the law, which effectively made it a dying language - like a dialect of Native American Cherokee, it didn't have much use outside of the tribe. By speaking it, it seemed I was touching the very soul of every man and woman in the room, and they weren't shy about telling me how much it meant to them.

In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it's complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they've had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language.

Ein Reich ohne Bücher, ist ein verlorenes Reich.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

And that's all this Prime Minister needed, a nice multi-syllable word like destabilization to turn it into a fucking jingle. But he threw us on the defensive in a way that I'll make sure never happens again. Of course the only people listening was Penthouse magazine. Goddamn, what does it mean when the conscience of America airbrushes pussy for a living?

You, inquisitor, are a man who collects words. You collect mine.

This world is what we have made of it. If it is ruthless today it is because we have made it ruthless by our attitudes. If we change ourselves we can change the world, and changing ourselves begins with changing our language and methods of communication. I highly recommend reading this book and applying the Nonviolent Communication process it teaches. It is a significant first step toward changing our communication and creating a compassionate world. –Arun Gandhi

While we may not consider the way we talk to be "violent," words often lead to hurt and pain, whether for others or ourselves. In

The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves—to outside authorities—for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.

I define judgments—both positive and negative—as life-alienating communication.

Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgments rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing. I believe life-alienating communication is rooted in views of human nature that have exerted their influence for several centuries. These views stress humans' innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature.

I was struck by the crucial role of language and our use of words. I have

Nonviolent communication does not mandate that we remain completely objective nd refrain from evaluating. It only requires that we maintain a separation between our observations and our evaluations. Nonviolent communication is a process language that discourages static generalizations, instead, evaluations are to be based in observations specific to time and context.

O mundo em que vivemos é aquilo que fazemos dele. Se hoje é impiedoso, foi porque nossas atitudes o tornaram assim. Se mudarmos a nós mesmos, poderemos mudar o mundo, e essa mudança começará por nossa linguagem e nossos métodos de comunicação.

the dangers of a language that implies absence of choice

Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgments rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing.

The use of the common expression "have to", as in "There are some things you have to do, whether you like it or not," illustrates how personal responsibility for our actions can be obscured in speech. The phrase "makes one feel", as in "You make me feel guilty," is another example of how language facilitates denial of personal responsibility for own feelings and thoughts.

Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions.

In our language there is a word with enormous power to create shame and guilt ("should")

While the effects of negative labels such as "lazy" and "stupid" may be more obvious, even a positive or an apparently neutral label such as "cook" limits our perception of the totality of another person's being.

When we speak a language that denies choice, we forfeit the life in ourselves for a robotlike mentality that disconnects us from our own core.

When we use language which denies choice (for example, words such as should, have to, ought, must, can't, supposed to, etc.), our behaviors arise out of a vague sense of guilt, duty, or obligation.

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.