Quotes About Language

I'm a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.

I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine.

I've always felt that poetry was particularly erotic, more than prose was... I say that you read poems not with your eyes and not with your ears, but with your mouth. You taste it.

The words 'maybe' and 'perhaps' are literally the same - the flavor is the same, the educational level is the same. But you just know when to use maybe and when to use perhaps. I think it's because of this: You get to know the tastes or musical tastes of words themselves, and this informs your choice, whether you use them or not.

I think your conversations are indicative of your tastes - even your diction.

One of the series I like is D.M. Cornish's 'Monster Blood Tattoo,' in which he creates a whole language. Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There's no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.

To voice one's curmudgeonly thoughts - 'I hate tattoos,' 'If that kid says 'like' even one more time, I'm going to fire him,' and such things, instantly labels one as a geezer.

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, 'I've been gypped,' or, 'He welshed on the deal.'

My mom taught me German before I knew English. And I went to French immersion school.

If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is when we learn all these fantastic stories. Feeding the imagination is what makes a subject come alive.

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.

Tamil for me is my cousin Esha. I even told her that I was preparing to play a Tamilian and asked her if she could teach me the language.

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication.

Mostly people are ignorant, what is the language of painting. You know, they're ignorant. It is so difficult to make them aware, but time will teach them.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.

We don't teach kids how to feel, we don't give them the words to go by.

I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.

My biggest regret is that I didn't teach my two children how to speak Spanish.

My mum made a conscious decision not to teach me any Indian languages so I wouldn't talk with an accent.

I definitely want to teach my daughter Spanish.

Always when you go to a new country and they teach you bad words, you just say them without knowing the value and people look at you because you didn't know that value of them.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.