Quotes About Language

Major General Howard Conner, "without the Navajos, the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.

alphabetic scripts tend to have between 20 and 40 characters (Russian, for example, has 36 signs, and Arabic has 28).

scripts that rely on semagrams tend to have hundreds or even thousands of signs (Chinese has over 5,000).

They called the Navajo language a "weird succession of guttural, nasal, tongue-twisting sounds Ã¢â'¬Â¦ we couldn't even transcribe it, much less crack it.

A Navajo message could never be faked and could always be trusted.

The letters a and l are the most common in Arabic, partly because of the definite article al-, whereas the letter j appears only a tenth as frequently.

No language as depending on arbitrary use and custom can ever be permanently the same, but will always be in a mutable and fluctuating state; and what is deem'd polite and elegant in one age, may be accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.

It was an idea consonant with Trench's underlying thought, that any grand new dictionary ought to be itself a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct.

Despite all the intellectual activity of the time there was in print no guide to the tongue, no linguistic vade mecum, no single book that Shakespeare or Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nash, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Izaak Walton, or any of their other learned contemporaries could consult.

is perhaps difficult to imagine so creative a mind working without a single work of lexicographical reference beside him, other than Mr. Cooper's crib (which Mrs. Cooper once threw into the fire, prompting the great man to begin all over again) and Mr. Wilson's little manual, but that was the condition under which his particular genius was compelled to flourish.

It was a dispute of such gravity—linguists and philologists were known to be mercurial and hold eternal grudges—that

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are sons of heaven.

Other dictionaries in other languages took longer to make; but none was greater, grander, or had more authority than this. The greatest effort since the invention of printing. The longest sensational serial ever written.

According to many lexical authorities, the word that Londoners used for traders from the Hanseatic eastern cities—easterlings—became shortened and incorporated into the English language as the word sterling, with its implied meaning of solid reliability.

Discounting every punctuation mark and every space—which any printer knows occupy just as much time to set as does a single letter—there are no fewer than 227,779,589 letters and numbers.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like language, by the human reality…

le parole fissano la verità solo dopo averla assassinata; lasciano sfuggire ciò che v'è in essa di più importante: la sua presenza.

The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general ; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.

Women- except in certain abstract gatherings such as conferences- do not use we; men say women, and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects .

Poder conversar é uma grande sorte, disse ela. É compreensível que, nos casais que não sabem se aproveitar das palavras, os mal-entendidos formem bolas de neve e acabem por estragar tudo entre eles.

No descubrí la negra magia de las palabras hasta que me mordieron en el corazón.

bstract gatherings such as conferences- do not use we; men say women, and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects.

Women- except in abstract gatherings such as conferences- do not use we; men say women, and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects.