Quotes About Language

Lidah boleh dipercaya waktu merasa; wajar dicuriga sebaik bersuara.

The French in particular confuse unadorned direct language with a lack of culture or intellectual elegance.

cleverness that the French adore and always mistake for wisdom.

a particularly American ability to come up with consistently dreadful names for new things. Just as there is an inspiring national talent to invent stuff and to think forward, so there is an equal and opposite imaginative black hole when it comes to naming the stuff: the conflation and truncation of words, adding extraneous vowels and hyphens to the portmanteau.

Of course, only Americans can name a shop In-n-Out Burger without collapsing into a heap of dirty sniggers. You know the difference between them and us? To us, a double entendre means only one thing; to them, it means absolutely nothing.

Gobbledygook could be a word invented by God to describe speaking in tongues.

The name skyscraper is originally nautical. Skyscraper is the tiny, triangular sail flown from the top of the mast.

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.

You can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right.

He said it twice because he had never said it before, and it sounded funny.

One of the difficulties of thinking clearly about anything is that it is almost impossible not to form our ideas in words which have some previous association for us; with the result that our thought is already shaped along certain lines before we have begun to follow it out. Again, a word may have various meanings, and our use of it in one sense may deceive our readers (or even ourselves) into supposing that we were using it in some other sense.

It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. Would you write 'A Happy Birthday' on it for me?

Nouns and verbs are the guts of the language. Beware of covering up with adjectives and adverbs.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

The spoken word is ephemeral. The written word, eternal. A symphony, timeless.

What is plain should be said plainly.

Grammar used to make a good exercise . . . before the days of crosswords.

Spelling is local, or rather national.

?iir bir ?ey anlatmaz demek, anlam? yoktur, anlams?zd?r demek de?ildir. Anlamla yola ç?k?lmaz demektir." ?lhan Berk, 'Poetika', sayfa 61

A?k sözcü?ü yerini, anlam?n? dumura u?ratt?. S?radan bir sözcük gibi yerini her ?eye açt?. Tanr? gibi varolup da var olam?yor art?k. Hem a?k?n varl??? da çok su götürür. Gerçekte a?k yoktur: Var k?lmak istiyoruz. Bu hakk?m?z da. Ba?ka bir ?eyimiz yok çünkü.

Dil, anlatma arac? oldu?u de?in tersini de içerir. Kendi d???nda hiçbir ?ey anlatmayabilir. ?öyle de söyleyebiliriz bunu: Anlam?n olmad??? yerde de i?levini sürdürür. ?iirde bu daha belirgindir." ?lhan Berk, 'Poetika', sayfa 11

Dilin geçirdi?i bu serüveni, yani susmay?, bir ?ey önermemeyi, uzakl???, kendi d???na ç?kmay?, cinneti, daha nice ?eyi bütün ba?yap?tlarda bulabiliriz." ?lhan Berk, 'Poetika', sayfa 12

?yi bir ?iir anlamla yola ç?kmaya her zaman engeldir. Her ?eyden önce bir ?iirden düzyaz?dan anlad???m?z anlamda bir anlam beklemek, ona öyle yakla?mak ?iirin do?as?na ayk?r?d?r." ?lhan Berk, 'Poetika', sayfa 55