Quotes About Language

Non fu troppo difficile, dato che negli idiomi delle bestie ci sono molte meno parole che nelle lingue umane, c'è solo il tempo presente, non esistono né il passato né il futuro, e ci sono solo verbi, sostantivi ed esclamazioni, nient'altro.

What surrounded me did not count. All that counted was made of words.

Al fin y al cabo, hay momentos en la vida de un individuo y de un pueblo en los que el silencio es una utilización abominable del lenguaje. No

Really," "really and truly," those code words which barely conceal a lie.)

in all kinds of colors that don't have names. In general, I think there are far more colors and smells than there are words. The

But why write about things that exist even without you? Why describe in words things that are not words?

Lo que me rodeaba no me interesaba. Todo lo que me interesaba estaba hecho de palabras.

Metaphors] replace genuine uncertainty about the world with semantic ambiguity. A metaphor is a cover-up.

Words are like charms, she realizes. If said often enough, they will make it so

Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery.

The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.

I always got the words pedestrian and Presbyterian confused. I didn't understand why Presbyterians always had the right of way.

The word literature enters the room with its nose in the air. But get it in a corner, ask the right questions, and it will reluctantly fess up to its humble origins. It hails from the Latin litterae, you whisper in your date's ear. It puts on a big act, but it literally just means "things made of letters.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate.

I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?' ... And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other's backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don't use any of the baby talk, code words, or short hand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other.

I often reread passages of Lolita for its exquisite language. To me, Lolita has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life.

We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English.

Poor service, bad treatment, no respect - that's the penalty for not speaking English well in America.