Quotes About Language

those tribes whose infants creep and crawl tend to have more complex societies, higher technology, and some form of written language. Most tribes that restrict their infants from crawling have no writing of their own and can be taught to read only with great difficulty.

The need to express ourselves at all costs is hard-wired into our brains as deeply as our drive for food or sex.

Max Müller took advantage of the new insights of his time into the IE languages and attempted to explain the development of Greek mythology, not by questioning the facts but by analyzing the language used in mythology. His main point was that mythology arose because people misunderstood poetic language used in the admiration of nature and interpreted it as narrative language about divine beings.

According to Müller, during this time language still was not capable of expressing anything that required conceptual thought. It contained no abstract nouns, such as beauty, or any adjectives, such as beautiful, because such words generalized concepts from direct observations. Thus, he claimed that the earliest languages consisted entirely of nouns that referred to substantial objects and verbs describing actions.17

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

Terminological inexactitude.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

Men's tongues in some things outrun women's.

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

We live longer but less precisely and in shorter sentences.

In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

The Three Oddest Words When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it. When I pronounce the word nothing, I make something no nonbeing can hold.

An idea abstracted from man does not fully exist…. There is no word that is not also flesh.

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.

Wir brauchen keine Dichter mit guter Grammatik. Zu guter Grammatik fehlt uns Geduld. Wir brauchen die mit dem heißen heiser geschluchzten Gefühl. Die zu Baum Baum und zu Weib Weib sagen und ja sagen und nein sagen: laut und deutlich und dreifach und ohne Konjunktiv.

For example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan.

My words are not that powerful. I started saying in 1985 I don't think we should have a music talking about ni**ers and b*tches and h*es. It had no impact. I've said it. I've repeated it. I still repeat it. To me, that's more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

el mexicano es por naturaleza silencioso…Si no sabe hablar muy bien, sabe en cambio, callar de manera excelente

I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain, and their pancake is crepe. Pain and poison and crap. That's what they have every day.

Love', this English word: like other English words it has tense. 'Loved' or 'will love' or 'have loved'. All these tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, love is '?' (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.

I am sick of speaking English like this... I am scared that I have become a person who is always very aware of talking, speaking, and I have become a person without confidence, because I can't be me. I have become so small, so tiny, while the English culture surrounding me becomes enormous. It swallows me... I am dominated by it... Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and so painful?

English words made only from twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese.