Quotes About Language

but words are symbols, and symbols never resonate the same for everyone.

Along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other.

Again, we find in modern art and modern music a language which does not communicate.

Beneath our loquacious chatter, there is a silent language…Our common human language is not…something to do with vocal cords and speech. It is, rather, our sense of proportion, our balance, harmony and other aspects of simple and fundamental form.

he also noticed that certain things which he felt deeply changed their meaning at the touch of words, so that he could no longer recognize them himself as he spoke. So that indeed he often wondered whether thinking were enough, whether thoughts were not a mere groping for something that was forever out of reach...

Cookie avait fait quelque chose de tout à fait compréhensible, mais cela ne pouvait pas se communiquer. On ne peut pas mettre ça en mots. Les mots mentent comme ils respirent.

Les hobos évitaient, en général, d'apprendre des langues, pour ne pas se laisser piéger par tous les trucs qui vont avec le vocabulaire, lequel est toujours celui des autres, une espèce d'héritage, qui vous tombe dessus.

Linguista sum, linguistici nihil a me alienum puto.

I believe that the poetic incompetence of some bigoted linguists has been mis­ taken for an inadequacy of the linguistic science itself. All of us here, however, definitely realize that a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachro­nisms.

In Sanskrit, there exists no word for 'The Individual' (L'Individu). En Grèce antique, il n'y avait aucun mot pour dire 'Devoir' (Duty). In French, the word for 'Wife' is the same as the word for 'Woman.' En anglais, nous n'avons aucun mot semblable à l'exquise 'Jouissance!

Learn to write well and you will walk on water and turn wine into opium. You will speak a thousand new tongues and talk to the gods. You will live in constant and everlasting euphoria.

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.

It's really sad for me that in the United States the Latino community is losing its culture and language, especially among kids born here - a lot of them can't even speak our language.

The use of the plough goes back to pre-Harappan times and one of the words frequently used for the plough – langala – is from Munda, a non-Aryan language.

Aryan' and 'Dravidian' used as terms for peoples confuses language and race since these are language labels, and should correctly be used as, 'Aryan-speaking people' and 'Dravidian-speaking people'.

Dravidian became the counter-point to the Aryan.

We know from many examples all over the world and from many periods of history that it was perfectly feasible for people of different racial origins, brought together through migration, trade, conquest or persecution, to find themselves ultimately using the same language.

Identity by religion, cutting across caste, region and language, has become something of a fantasy for pre-modern times.

His most famous lines became popular expressions in Mexico. He would say, "Usted no se despreocupe"—"Don't un-worry yourself." And my favorite: "Ni modo chato!"—"No worries, dude!

But he remained absolutely convinced that his way of life was no worse than mine, only different, pointing out in the process certain inconsistencies: Why, he wondered, did rich people call it sushi while poor people called it bait? I

he remained absolutely convinced that his way of life was no worse than mine, only different, pointing out in the process certain inconsistencies: Why, he wondered, did rich people call it sushi while poor people called it bait?

After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language.

Here was a demonstration of what Howells maintained—at just about this time—was his most liberating literary strength, his "single-minded use of words, which he employs as Grant did to express the plain, straight meaning their common acceptance has given them . . . He writes English as if it were a primitive and not a derivative language, without Gothic or Latin or Greek behind it."13

He would rather decline 2 drinks than one German verb."18