Quotes About Language

He who writes well runs the civilization. Everyone else does the grunt work.

PL1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

An apt quotation is as good as an original remark.

Our proverbs are sacred and correct.

In Sumerian,the word for ear and wisdom is the same. The ear, which is located mostly internally and is coiled like a spiral or labyrinth, takes in sounds and begins to transform the imperceptible into meaning. -Inanna–Queen of Heaven and Earth1

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

No son las personas las que hacen las interpretaciones sino las interpretaciones las que hacen a las personas.

Third Year German was the only class where she felt vaguely human. They spent the period listening to "99 Luftballons" and trying to work out the lyrics back into English. Hielten sich fur Captain Kirk. When you found German comforting, you knew you were in trouble

Muddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking.

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking.

We were seeking an answer to the strange fact that a mushroom, one single species, the pucka, was 'animate' in their language, was 'endowed with a soul', like all animals and human beings, but unlike all other vegetation, which is construed grammatically as 'inanimate', as 'without a soul'.

History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.

Damn it, my language is most controlled, madam," said Captain Gregg stiffly, "and as for my morals, I can assure you that no woman has ever been the worse in body or pocket for knowing me, and I'd like to know how many mealy-mouthed psalm-singers can say the same. I've lived a man's life and I'm not ashamed of it, but I've always tried to tell the truth and shame the devil.

Sex is a matter of biology, while gender is a matter of grammar, and there is no earthly reason why sex should be involved in gender distinctions.

Note in particular that a noun denoting a group of people takes which, not who. You cannot write *the battalion who had captured the fortress because a battalion, though composed of people, is not itself a person: write the battalion which had captured the fortress.

It is possible to use that with people, but the result is often rather clumsy. While the linguists that are working on this problem is not quite wrong, it doesn't sound as good as the linguists who are working on this problem. Prefer who with people.

dissociate, disassociate Both are possible, but dissociate is more usual, and is recommended.

it is impossible to use that if the relative clause is non-restrictive – that is, if it does not serve to identify the thing under discussion, but only serves to provide more information about that thing. So, you must write the Suez Canal, which was opened in 1869, and you cannot write *the Suez Canal, that was opened in 1869.

I can't speak my own language - Iesu, All those good words; And I outside them.

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.

Almost everything that men have said best has been said in Greek.

Nick commenced a monologue explaining the impossibility of such a phenomenon: the subordination of content to the aesthetics of language in Arabic literature, the dominance of panegyrics and eulogies as an art form, etc.