Quotes About Language

If you look at it from another point of view, words can be very confusing. Because they are often beautiful and we have so many of them and although they are very powerful they have no will of their own, we can use them without permission-wildly, madly and get into terrible muddles.

settled by the French," he

Perhaps no word exists in our terribly inadequate English language to name this abstract, emotional thing that is not forgiveness, is not forgetting, and also is both.

We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.

Occasionally black parents have books such as Huckleberry Finn, which uses the word "nigger," removed from libraries or reading lists.812 Any whites who wanted to take a violently antiwhite writer such as LeRoi Jones off the shelves would be accused at least of censorship, if not of racism.

Zita Wilensky, a 16-year veteran, was the only white employee of Miami-Dade County Domestic Violence Unit. Her co-workers made fun of her and called her gringa and Americana. Miss Wilensky says her boss gave her 60 days to learn Spanish, and fired her when she failed to do so.271

Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites.

The county had reduced high-school transportation, eliminated all middle school sports, and was seeking $77 million more from the state for the year's English Language Learners instruction.

I want to write my own eulogy, and I want to write it in Latin. It seems only fitting to read a dead language at my funeral.

I once asked an old Japanese man why Japan decided to team up with Germany during WWII, and do you know what he told me? Well, you would if you speak Japanese, which I don't.

I want to create a seventeen-syllable word that encompasses the human condition, and then use that word to form the world's most perfect haiku.

I want to scream sometimes, because I hate when people refer to a dead person as the late" so and so. I'm sorry to break that bad news, but that person isn't just late—they're not even coming!

In the land of Gibberish, the man who makes sense, the man who speaks clearly, clearly speaks nonsense.

The text you print and the text you read can become an important API.

Now I am writing this diary in English, which for me is not the language of intimacy or love, but an attempt at distance and sanity, a means of recalling normality.

But the bigger point is that most non-English speakers are in weak schools no matter the language of instruction. Nationally, English-language learners drop out at about twice the average rate.

It's amazing when you're playing to a crowd who barely understands English but they're singing parts of your song back to you.

Filthy talk makes us feel comfortable with filthy action.

understood to another person is essentially a problem of cryptology.

It was funny how he felt more and more generous toward Fabyan by the year. You get older and want to connect to the people who understand. You try to speak with the young and find that something is wrong with your ears. They use their own slang, their own code, and you start to feel nostalgic about your former enemies, who at least shared the same intense moment on earth and spoke words you could understand

They're need, must, can't, easy, just, only, and fast. These words get in the way of healthy communication. They are red flags that introduce animosity, torpedo good discussions, and cause projects to be late.

It's no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in school. It's not just academic writing, either. There are a lot of skills that are useful in academia that aren't worth much outside of it.

Contrata buenos escritores Si tienes que decidirte entre varios candidatos para un puesto, contrata al que escriba mejor.

Hay algunas palabras que no deberían emplearse nunca en las empresas. Y no nos referimos a mierda o joder. Se trata de imprescindible, obligatorio, imposible, fácil, sencillamente, sólo y rápido. Son rayas rojas que si se cruzan crean malestar, sabotean las discusiones saludables y provocan retrasos en los proyectos.