Quotes About Language

History is in the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we are. History is embedded in the language we use, the things we make, and the rituals we observe. History is culture—and so is Christianity.

Memory, historical and otherwise, is a weapon of cultural self-defense. History is not just what is written in textbooks. History is in the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we are. History is embedded in the language we use, the things we make, and the rituals we observe.

That, and the way those who take away freedom couch it in the language of liberating victims from oppression.

I went back to look for you. Not understanding the language of hello, I thought I'd speak it just the same.

The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.

The Greek word barbaros at first just meant a foreigner who spoke a different language.

the Greek word literally means 'high city'

it seems to have been only at this time that the word demokratia came to be coined

A syllabary is a system in which each syllable of the language is represented by its own sign.

One of the first Greek words to be recognised in Linear B was represented

the four characters: ti-ri-po-de, meaning 'two tripods'.)

Instead, the Greeks looked elsewhere. The writing system that eventually caught their attention had been developed

The Phoenician script was in effect a syllabary.

by leaving out the vowels, it had the great advantage of reducing the number of signs to just over twenty.

The Semitic signs were given names that served as mnemonics for the respective sounds: alf, bet, and so on.

This is why, when the Greeks adapted this system for their own use, they called it the 'alphabet'.

Many of the most characteristic Macedonian names are transparently formed from Greek words.

the highest levels of Macedonian society were thoroughly Greek-speaking by the mid-fourth century BCE.

Alternatively, it may be that a form of early Indo-European arrived with the first farmers

Greek slowly emerged—distinct from others of the Indo-European group and incorporating elements

the distant origin of the Greek language may reach all the way back to the beginning of the period that we call the Neolithic

What language the people here speak, or what name they give to the place, will not be recorded for posterity.

the distant origin of the Greek language may reach all the way back to the beginning of the period that we call the Neolithic, or New Stone Age.

the Greek-speaking Roman Empire after the death of Heraclius in 641 had turned into the Byzantine.