Quotes About Language

What drove the hominins on through to larger brains, higher intelligence, and thence language-based culture? That, of course, is the question of questions.

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.

Only two industries refer to their customers as 'users': computer design and drug dealing

All grammars leak.

Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same.

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.

The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.

The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached ... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.

A substantial literature on "verbal overshadowing," for instance, suggests that consciously reflecting on our perceptions or evaluations of taste, and then being forced to put them into words, actually impairs our judgment.

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

The spoken language is a symbolization of something that happened, could have happened, or is in the process of happening, while the written language is a symbolization of the spoken language. James Joyce, for example, dedicated his life to trying to close the gap between the two systems. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce portrays in writing the workings of the verbal parts of the brain.

Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds' The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904

If he [Pound] is not careful he will take to meaning what he says instead of saying what he means.

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users.

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness.

One of the most extraordinary examples of adaptation to immaturity in contemporary American society today is how the word abusive has replaced the words nasty and objectionable.

You can tell the nature of the man by the words he chooses.

A thought has no specific language; however, it can fly and land, upon whichever mind and language.

Being indigenous does not mean the authority on language since the majority does not speak and write in a correct, scientific, and scholarly language.