Quotes About Language

Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it. G.

This is where we get the absurd rule that one must never, ever, end a sentence with a preposition. As Winston Churchill put it, "That's the sort of nonsense up with which we shall not put.

All this said, fussy grammarians need friends too, and so you may seek out and encourage them. Drop them a little note, telling them that they are your very favorite fussy grammarian, out with whom you like to hang. And if anybody winced there at my use of a plural pronoun for an indefinite singular, then may I suggest counseling?

The brain is more like a muscle and less like a storage area. If you really want to be a writer, you should want to write a lot. If you want to write a lot, then you need to be in training. You are preparing to run marathons, not emptying a suitcase. Learning new languages, acquiring new vocabulary, keeping yourself in various forms of constant logocentric discipline is one of the best things you can do. And language acquisition is nothing if not logocentric discipline.

Justin Taylor, editor of Crossway, cites the example of one writer who wanted to thank "my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand." See what happens when you leave out the serial comma? But Andy Le Peau, at InterVarsity, points to a different kind of example. Suppose someone were to dedicate his book to "my mother, Ayn Rand, and God"? Now the serial comma creates the idea that Ayn Rand is in apposition to mother, which it presumably wasn't.

And what sound does ough make? As somone once noted, "A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." This should be read by the learned as "A ruff, doe-faced, thawtful plowman strode throo the streets of Scarboruh; after falling into a sloo, he coffed and hiccupped." Quite a language we have here.

We are badly diseased with regard to vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, and what we desperately need is for someone to write an elegant little volume of sane English usage that will make us all whole again.

Man is multiplied by the "number of languages" he possesses and speaks. (Los Viajes!)

Ludwig Wittgenstein: «Los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo».

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It s the letter I use to spell yuzz a ma tuzz. You ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond Z and start poking around

I box in yellow Gox box socks.

We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it alive and vital. Virtually every page is a cliff-hanger—you've got to force them to turn it.

The words in this book are all phooey. When you say them, your lips will make slips and back flips and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!

I hate callin women bitches but the bitches love it.

Its like I know what I gotta say, I just dont know how to say it to you.

I could teach you how to speak my language, Rosetta Stone.

I'm only just learning what language to use when I want my microphone turned down, you know, because it's all so new to me. It can be quite difficult on a daily basis to communicate with the people I work with, so I'm just looking forward to knowing more.

Who knows but that all the men to whom reference has been made, and a multitude of others who lived in by-gone ages borrowed their wise sayings from the talk of the firesides and the conversations of the market places; so that the origin of many proverbs now flippantly quoted in the converse of men is lost in the mists of forgotten centuries.

But as Mark Twain once observed, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. So do strive for that right word!

In the same way, consider bungalow versus house versus building . . . starlet versus girl versus female . . . Colt versus revolver versus firearm . . . steak versus meat versus food.

In general, the trick is to bring the past forward into the present, so that you describe what happens in past tense instead of past perfect.

To get maximum effect, put adverbs at the beginning or end of the sentence: "Angrily, he walked away." Or, "He walked away angrily." Though special cases may justify "He walked angrily away," or the like, most often the effect of the modifier upon the reader is lost.

And so it goes with words and language. They're tools. All your writing life, you work with them . . . using them to tie your reader to your story.