Quotes About Language

One thing I wish I'd been told in school is that my language is valid.

I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard.

I really wished I'd learned Spanish. I took it all in high school and was planning on trying to be fluent in it. I would get Selena tracks and sing with them and stuff like that.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

My inspiration came especially in the 1950s through the Vienna Group founded by writer H.C. Artmann. It showed me that if you want to say something, you have to let the language itself say it, because language is usually more meaningful than the mere content that one wishes to convey.

Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.

Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Americans just don't understand dry wit.

Our parents, loved ones, and friends are getting cancer. So we need to know how to care for them, support them, and understand what the hell is going on. I don't think it's that hard to reach them: you have to go where they are - online. You have to speak their language - humour, wit, and edge. And you have to be honest, authentic and bold.

In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase 'hope and change,' to wit: 'big, fat government.'

American audiences, a lot of people couldn't understand a word of 'The Witch.'

I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money.

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say 'oral method' to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say 'sign language' to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.

Zimbabweans are so smart and witty and able to weave together tons of situations and experiences into terminologies that are just utterly original.

I can't imagine how much time it took Matt Bucy to cut up 'The Wizard of Oz' and reassemble every word of dialog into alphabetical order. The resulting movie is called 'Of Oz the Wizard.'

I think the word 'woke' is now over. The first time I heard my mature, white dad use that term, I was like 'OK, this is done.'