Quotes About Language

It makes me happy, and also sad, to think that this is where playful language is cherished now, and where the verbosity that I and my clever friends prized in our youth has gone to reside: the slums. Words don't cost a penny; during the Depression, they were all many of us had. I used them to make a fortune.

The world is defined by smells – not words or shapes or sounds. This is the language that makes sense, that everyone understands.

Young'uns!" Mrs. P. interrupted. "No bad language, not at the table, please. And need I remind you, I am the table!

Mum! Da!" he cried out in his half sleep.

Life doesn't exist inside language: too bad for me.

In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language.

Without language the only people the rebels can kill are themselves.

Language gets learned in the context of interaction—in the context of eating and playing and asking for the names of things, not passively looking at a computer monitor. And that's

And if they are lucky enough to be exposed to multiple languages, they will master all of them, as long as the languages are presented in a natural context, such as when dad speaks Spanish and mom speaks English or the live-in nanny speaks French.

Some researchers have suggested that at around this time, typical 18- to 20-month-olds can learn as many as nine new words a day. Imagine that—63 new words a week!

hat) than to one that they didn't hear, such as "cup." By

The poet found illness a convenient language for his skewed relation to normal life, for his inability at times to function, for his radical abdication of responsibilities. Illness offered, for decades, a comfortable way for him to think about himself. Ever the poet, he pretty much set up camp and lived in the metaphor of being sick.

We often describe women who write about pain or vulnerabilities as 'brave,' but this type of confession is so frequently exchanged, so par for the course, so deeply and comfortably ensconced in the language of female confidences, so nearly de rigueur in the kind of personal writing ascendant now, so deeply woven in the way women get along with each other in the world generally that bravery may not be quite the right word. It is, in a way, something more like capitulating.

The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.

Language, on the other hand, newer to the brain, may be more linked to those parts that regulate dopamine and thereby connected to pleasure.

A woman's name will always suffice, but if you'll keep your ears open in a room with men and women, you'll hear it's the call used least often.

Should not the Society of Indexers be know as Indexers, Society of, The?

He said cool like I say a Spanish word when I'm not sure of the pronunciation.

I find fairies with cell phones disconcerting enough. Do they really need to use text talk?

Cwn Annwn," I said. "I think I'm finally pronouncing that right. Welsh. So many letters. So few vowels.

Enigma! I call, adding a Here, kitty, kitty, kitty! because obviously it's the universal language for feline summoning. And maybe it is -- no sooner do I croon that magic phrase than I hear an answering meow.

If you called the faery handbag by its right name, it would be something like 'orzipankianikcz,' which means the 'bag of skin where the world lives,' only Zofia never spelled that word the same way twice. She said you had to spell it a little differently each time. You never wanted to spell it exactly the right way, because that would be dangerous.

Lenin's idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.

My father taught us to learn as much as possible of any tongue we came across. He says it's better than money in the bank.