Quotes About Language

'No means no' is puritanism.

Hebrew in America has a bemusing past. The Puritans, out of scriptural piety, once dreamed of establishing Hebrew as the national language.

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

I'd like to pursue music back home because I still tend to express myself better through my mother language - English - and it's something I've been dreaming about and would like to achieve.

Without your data, Google couldn't pursue the dream of trying to figure out what you're really thinking when you're asking a question, of trying to discern, from the imprecision of your language, the exact answer you're looking for.

The course that I have uniformly pursued, ever since I became a missionary, has been rather peculiar. In order to become an acceptable and eloquent preacher in a foreign language, I deliberately abjured my own. When I crossed the river, I burnt my ships.

In the middle of the 20th century, aspirations to sound 'proper' were passionately pursued. Dictionaries as late as the Seventies include many pronunciations that could cut the proverbial glass.

I used to think there was something cheap in trying to make beautiful sentences. Now I think language has its own ways and ends, and it does one's thinking good to try to serve them. Beauty isn't truth. But a certain kind of clear beauty will help in the pursuit of truth.

Language is too complex for a computer to understand. It's not going to be able to make sense of what people are saying en masse. We need a new type of discipline that puts together computer scientists and social scientists, who can add context to the situation.

I love doing the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle, even on the days I can't finish it.

The umlaut isn't on my birth certificate. I had this book as a child called Chloe and Maude, and there was an umlaut on the e, and I said, I want that! It's a little flair. Just to confuse people even more.

They were looking for boys who could speak with an English accent for the movie 'Lord of the Flies.' I had been abroad enough so I knew that accent.

Senator, we just don't use that kind of language on the floor of the Senate.

Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.

When I was 14, I came to school in London. I remember it was very cold, but also having to adjust and become fluent in English.

We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

I speak fluent Kosovan.

I could never learn to be totally fluent in any other language.

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.

I am quite fluent in Odiya. I understand the people of Odisha, and they understand me.

To the Tamil media, I have mostly interacted in English since I am not fluent in Tamil.

I'm so Filipino. I'm fluent in Filipino.

I have grown up in Chennai, so I speak Tamil fluent.