Quotes About Language

The old huntsman was a surprisingly good teacher. He didn't belabor his points, didn't talk down to us, and didn't mind questions. Even Tempi's trouble with the language didn't frustrate him. Even

Kist, crayle, en kote," he swore furiously. He threw down the metal tube where it rang sharply against the stone floor. "Kraemet brevetan Aerin!" I fought down the sudden urge to laugh. My Siaru wasn't perfect, but I was fairly certain Kilvin had said, Shit in God's beard.

Nuestras formas de hablar son como dibujos de nombres. Nombres vagos, débiles, pero nombres al fin y al cabo. Ten cuidado con ellos.

Hay dos cosas que deben recordar. La primera es que nuestros nombres nos dan forma, y que nosotros damos forma a nuestros nombres. —Dejó de pasearse y nos miró—. La segunda es que hasta el nombre más sencillo es tan complejo que su mente jamás podría tantear siquiera sus límites, y mucho menos entenderlo lo bastante bien para pronunciarlo.

A veces los nombres se basan en otros más antiguos. Cuanto más antiguo es el nombre, más cerca está de la verdad.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names.

the loftier peaks of mathematics did not delight me. I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.

The figures of our speaking are like pictures of names. Vague, weak names, but names nonetheless. Be mindful of them.

Luckily, languages are like musical instruments: the more you know, the easier it is to pick up new ones.

But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.

Mit Worten über Worte sprechen zu wollen, das ist, als würde man versuchen, mit einem Bleistift eben diesen Bleistift zu zeichnen, und zwar auf dem Bleistift sebst. Unmöglich. Verwirrend. Frustrierend.

blatherskate," I

No creo que se pueda aprender todo de nada, y menos de un idioma.

Because of this my progress was frustratingly slow, but I couldn't help but be fascinated. It was like suddenly being given a second tongue. And it was a secret thing, of sorts. I have always had a weakness for secrets.

All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt that language made any sense at all;

On the other hand, everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. Soon he was no longer smelling mere wood, but kinds of wood: maple wood, oak wood, pinewood, elm wood, pearwood, old, young, rotting, moldering, mossy wood, down to single logs, chips, and splinters.

Ä°nsan bu konuda ne kadar çok ÅŸey bilirse, geçerli tek bir söz bile söyleyebilmesi de o ölçüde zorla??yor.

In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.

Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? It is also plausible that early success heightened their motivation, or that both success and motivation are due to their special aptitude for language learning or the favourable context in which they were learning.

Swain (2000) considers collaborative dialogues such as these as the context where 'language use and language learning can co-occur. It is language use mediating language learning. It is cognitive activity and it is social activity' (p. 97).

We are currently working on a new series of books for teachers, the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom.

most learning, including language learning, starts with declarative knowledge, that is, knowledge that we are aware of having, for example, a grammar rule. The hypothesis is that, through practice, declarative knowledge may become procedural knowledge, or the ability to use the knowledge. With continued practice, the procedural knowledge can become automatized and the learner may forget having learned it first as declarative knowledge.

the features of the language that are most frequent are not always learned first. For example, virtually every English sentence has one or more articles ('a' or 'the'), but even advanced learners have difficulty using these forms correctly in all contexts. Finally, although the learner's first language does have an influence, many aspects of these developmental stages are similar among learners from different first language backgrounds.

example, it has been observed that Japanese students are often reluctant to speak English in communicative lessons despite high levels of motivation to learn the language. Furthermore, when students with high levels of English language proficiency do communicate they often speak with a strong Japanese accent and intentionally produce grammatical errors for fear that they might be perceived as considering themselves to be superior (Greer 2000).