Quotes About Language

Language seldom fails quietly, it fails noisily.

You guys writing on Bosnia don't hear our questions, because you don't speak our language.

This was probably one of those many queer experiences that human beings could not speak of to each other, because though words could be formed into a casket to hold visions, and could be at the same time the power that liberated them, they seemed of little use when one tried to use them to explain to another person what it was they had set free. Words were queer things, Stella decided, to be at once so powerful and so weak.

Please inform His Excellency that his use of the word soon is inaccurate," she said coldly. "It means in a timely manner, which, in my case, obviously no longer applies.

Byrne had an inspiration. He called Nim over, put the ointment on Nim's hand, and asked him, in plain English, to put it on Midge's wound. Nim promptly walked over to Midge, slathered the ointment on his ankle, and in doing so broke the ice between them.

La gente crede che le cose dette siano più facili da cancellare, mentre in realtà il tono di voce, i movimenti e le espressioni le fissano in modo indelebile.

Since clarity suggests simplicityAnd since the simple thing is here inapt,I choose obscurities of tongue and touch,The shadow side of language and the darkHinted in conversations close to quarrel,Conceived within the mind in aftermaths.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

From bars and bleachers to media panels and the halls of government, it's men who do more of the talking. This has been going on for a long, long time—women being accused of talking too much, even as men often dominate conversations, interrupt, mansplain, and do more of the sum total of all human talking.

But a library is a gorgeous language that you will never speak fluently. You will try every day of your life. Order is a certain clumsy grammar, a mnemonic device. Order just means: try to use verbs. Consider the tense. The poetry will follow.

When you entered the cavern of another language, you could leave certain people behind, for they had no interest in following you in. You could, by way of translation, emerge from the cavern and share your adventures with them. You didn't have to be an intellectual in a black beret smoking clove cigarettes to be a translator, not at all. You could become one in your blue flannel pajamas, your face smeared with Clearsil. You did.

Ah, the ancient language of sarcasm. How it suits you." "Why thank you, petal. It is one of my many talents, and I happen to be fluent in the language." I dazzled him with my smile. "You need to give me a manly nickname." "You haven't given me any reason to give you one yet." "That's harsh.

Black Hawk was taken on a tour of cities after his capture. I read his autobiography as soon as I could. And I remembered the line he said: "How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

naming things can be helpful.

Pam era convinta che fosse impossibile raccontare qualcosa in maniera fedele. Fragili parole sincere cadevano a casaccio sopra l'ampia distesa del tessuto di una vita, con tutti i suoi nodi e irregolarità.

I could not believe how Black Hawk was taken on a tour of cities after his capture. I read his autobiography as soon as I could. And I remembered the line he said: "How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

Words. Just little black marks on paper. Just sounds in the empty air. But think of the power they have! They can make you laugh or cry, love or hate, fight or run away. They can heal or hurt. They even come to look and sound like what they mean. Angry looks angry on the page. Ugly sounds ugly when you say it.

The term used to describe them was rednecks, a Scots border term meaning Presbyterians. Another was cracker, from the Scots word craik for "talk," meaning a loud talker or braggart. Both words became permanent parts of the American language, and a permanent part of the identity of the Deep South the Ulster Scots created.

all German-language newspapers in the United States were required to give English translations of anything they printed about the government.

Adam Smith would compose the founding text of modern economics— Inquiry Concerning the Wealth of Nations—in a language that was, it is all too easy to forget, a foreign tongue to him.

No, Ockham concluded, there is no common nature shared by individual dogs or men that we call by a common name. No universal exists outside the mind; everything that is real exists only as individuals. When I say, "All men are mortal," this is shorthand for saying, "Socrates is mortal," "Plato is mortal," and so on.

Ockham didn't use the term fiction to suggest that what we say about the world isn't true; just the opposite. Science deals with real life; and logic is the language of science. But we shouldn't mistake the logical gymnastics going on inside our heads for the reality going on outside. Science is about real things; logic, surprisingly perhaps, is not.

He liked to call people "brutes" or even "bitches" (in Scots it can apply to men as well as women).