Quotes About Language

Another reason Bible translation can be difficult is that there is a historical barrier between the original documents and the modern translator.

Another translational problem is that many languages make use of idioms, or figures of speech, that mean something in the original language but not necessarily in the translated language.

The reality is that Bible translation is not an easy task.

The word 'love' is a fucked up word that's been used and abused so much it no longer means shit. The same thing is true about 'beauty.' 'Beauty' doesn't mean anything anymore. Idots use the word, and look at what they use it for. Nothing! Anything! If you ever become educated, and I doubt if that will ever happen, you will have to understand that most of what you will learn is going to be just a lot of shit.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for cer- tain letters; We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep, Words are for those with promises to keep.

I adore italics, don't you?

Our words channel our thoughts. Our concepts drive our thinking. Our ideas shape our actions.

But we can rightly expect that our leaders use language that treats others with respect, and even honors them when they do good things for our land—even if we disagree with their politics.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Perhaps one of the reasons why revolutions have been so few among the English-speaking peoples is because English is so matter-of fact, so uninflammatory that the words needed to suspend the reason of rabbles are entirely lacking. The Romance languages, on the other hand, have not this disability, and the Slavonic languages seem to have been invented for the purpose of expressing or arousing the most intimate emotions without embarrassing either oneself or ones hearers.

The marvelous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.

After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles.'

Rationality is a matter of making allowed moves within language games. Imagination creates the games that reason proceeds to play. Then, exemplified by people such as Plato and Newton, it keeps modifying those games so that playing them is more interesting and profitable. Reason cannot get outside of the latest circle that imagination has drawn. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that imagination holds the primacy.

we are reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy's quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently.

Information game into the universe when the first hominids began to justify their actions to one another by making assertions and backing those assertions up with further assertions.

Information came into the universe when the first hominids began to justify their actions to one another by making assertions and backing those assertions up with further assertions.

To reach truth that one cannot be argued out of is to escape from the linguistically expressible to the ineffable. Only the ineffable—what is not describable at all—cannot be described differently.

Finally a soldier marched in and, holding his right hand to his chest, said, " Salaam aleikum. Chetor hastid? Jan-e-shoma jur ast? Khub hastid? Sahat-e-shoma khub ast? Be khair hastid? Jur hastid? Khane kheirat ast? Zinde bashi. " Which in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, means, "Peace be with you. How are you? Is your soul healthy? Are you well? Are you well? Are you healthy? Are you fine? Is your household flourishing? Long life to you." Or: "Hello.

A word spoken in Polish has quite a different effect than when spoken in that "foreign" tongue, German.

Cuanto más te acercas a lo esencial, menos puedes nombrarlo.

Sexist language promotes and maintains attitudes that stereotype people according to gender while assuming that the male is the norm—the significant gender. Nonsexist language treats both sexes equally and either does not refer to a person's sex when it is irrelevant or refers to men and women and to girls and boys in symmetrical ways.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. Anna Jameson