Quotes About Language

James Joyce, in his novel Finnegans Wake, in 1939, punned on the word "Hindoo" (as the British used to spell it), joking that it came from the names of two Irishmen, Hin-nessy and Doo-ley: "This is the hindoo Shimar Shin between the dooley boy and the hinnessy."30 Even Joyce knew that the word was not native to India.

And why is an orange the only fruit that has to share its name with its color? A banana isn't called yellow. It's not fair. If I were an orange, I would complain.

One step toward defining anything is to determine what it is not. A popular approach to the word pornography is an appeal to its ancient Greek roots. This approach should be discarded. The word pornography originally meant "writing about harlots or prostitutes." But its meaning has evolved over centuries of use through dozens of different cultures. Like the Greek word gymnasium, which originally meant, "place of nakedness," the word pornography has lost its connection with the past.

We see, too, how Christopher is at a stage in his disease where he can't remember the word for moon, but it doesn't matter, he knows it's something beautiful in the sky, isn't that enough?

In the future, I will have grandchildren who speak Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish. If they don't learn Arabic, they will be strangers to each other. They won't have any traces of where we came from. They won't be Syrian. And I will live in exile and die in exile.

A sentence is a set of words expressing themselves. A book is a set of words put together to change your consciousness."

I write because I love to play with language.

Gods of fucking algebra!

My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.

The more words you know, the more clearly and powerfully you will think...and the more ideas you will invite into your mind.

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.

Üzüntümle öylesine kayna?m???m ki" diyorum, "böylesine sarma? dola? bir karde?lik hakk?nda konu?maya al???k de?ilim

In real man, the "god-given" genital embrace has turned into the pornographic 4-lettering male-female intercourse.

Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.

Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.

Dont speak of tomorrow.Let the music speak to us tonight,in a happier language than ours.

So this is my aim for watercooler conversations: improve the ability to identify and understand errors of judgment and choice, in others and eventually in ourselves, by providing a richer and more precise language to discuss them. In at least some cases, an accurate diagnosis may suggest an intervention to limit the damage that bad judgments and choices often cause.

To think clearly about the future, we need to clean up the language that we use in labeling the beliefs we had in the past.

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. My

To be a good diagnostician, a physician needs to acquire a large set of labels for diseases, each of which binds an idea of the illness and its symptoms, possible antecedents and causes, possible developments and consequences, and possible interventions to cure or mitigate the illness. Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language.

Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language.

La gente que está cognitivamente ocupada3 es más probable que haga elecciones egoístas, use un lenguaje sexista y emita juicios superficiales en situaciones sociales.

In an article titled "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly," he showed that couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility

All this is very good advice, but we should not get carried away. High-quality paper, bright colors, and rhyming or simple language will not be much help if your message is obviously nonsensical, or if it contradicts facts that your audience knows to be true. The psychologists who do these experiments do not believe that people are stupid or infinitely gullible.