Quotes About Language

His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness.

I finally said, "Tutti, where did you learn to speak such good English?" "From a book!" she proclaimed. "I think you are a very clever girl," I informed her. "Thank you!" she said, and did a spontaneous little happy dance. "You are a very clever girl, too!

The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally "a walled garden.

For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante's Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that—from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare.

why is a hard question to answer in any language

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means "two," and the word zweifel, which means "doubt"—suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives.

Maybe you remember...what a powerful impact the word fuck used to have in our society--back before everybody and thier children started saying it 10 times a day before breakfast

Maybe you remember, Angela, what a powerful impact the word "fuck" used to have in our society—back before everybody and their children started saying it ten times a day before breakfast. Indeed, it was once a very potent word.

Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery, crawling up on one another as though trying to escape the page. His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness.

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure…I'm lonely…I'm a failure…I'm lonely…) and we become monuments to them.

A sad-faced Russian woman tells us she's treating herself to Italian lessons because I think I deserve something beautiful.

Making a living is nothing, the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference - with words.

I won't marry you," she repeated. "Why not? You were eager enough to fuck me." Anna winced. "I do wish you would stop using that word." Edward swung around and assumed a hideously sarcastic expression. "Would you prefer swive? Tup? Dance the buttock jig?

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light. Since then I have known this moment

but a library is a gorgeous language that you will never speak fluently.

You'll find, someday, Paks found herself saying, that your own tongue cuts you worse than any blade. I

Stop, he ordered, in a low but compelling voice. Do not take another step, or I fire! Dash it, he added vexedly, does the monstrosity understand English? How absurd this is! It understands the gesture, at least, I called, thrusting head and shoulders through the window. Lucas, for pity's sake, seize it! Don't stand there deriding its linguistic inadequacies!

What kind of housekeeping do you call this, Peabody?' I pointed out the injustice of the charge in a few brisk but well-chosen words. Emerson mopped his brow. 'Pardon my language, Peabody. It has been a trying morning. And now this!

Die Englânder! Niemals werde ich sie verstehen!

The invention of languages is the foundation.The "stories" were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows

The invention of languages is the foundation.The "stories" were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows' (Letters, 165, p. 219).

Dogs being great linguists, she quickly picked up English, far more quickly than I picked up German, so we understood each other very well, and couche, schönmachen, and pfui continued for a long time to be my whole vocabulary. Fortunately

The young man smiled—certainly a very personable young man—and explained that the light was no longer strong enough to do any more. Again in this explanation did he call me gnädiges Fräulein, and again was I touched by so much innocence. And his German, too, was touching; it was so conscientiously grammatical, so laboriously put together, so like pieces of Goethe learned by heart. By

Crumpling up the paper object which some of the visitors called a serviette, and some a tablenapkin, the ones who called it a tablenapkin being much shocked at the ones who called it a serviette, and the ones who called it a serviette not even being aware that they thereby placed themselves irrevocably beyond the pale.