Quotes About Language

Breathing itself was considered the first language.

I write to say what I cannot speak

If I don't say the thought right I might destroy it.

Naturally, the quality of language changed. Certain words became suspicious and vanished from public life. Words like 'hope', 'rights', 'truth'. Anyone heard uttering those words found empty spaces around them. It wasn't long before anyone using the word 'freedom' was suspected of harbouring dangerous intentions.

Centuries of being attached to the machine had atrophied the languages of the earth.

Music coheres and resolves according to lots of intrinsic rules—so many that we tend to call it a "language." But natural languages [...] typically have many specific words to point toward specific commonplace ideas. This language doesn't, or at least resists being used quite in that way.

The absurdity of our discussion did not escape us, but we had learned through bitter experience that a single word often mattered.

I told her that I was frustrated by market participants' inability to grasp the plain English meaning of my statement.

The reality that small changes in the phrasing of the FOMC's statement could have important effects on policy expectations sometimes led us to spend what seemed like an inordinate amount of time on the choice of a single word.

In any case, the change in our language seemed to work.

press-ganged', 'taking the wind out of your sails', 'shot across the bows', 'loose cannon', 'shipshape', 'batten down the hatches' belong more obviously to the sea. Others such as 'close quarters', 'cut and run', 'fathoming' something, 'broad in the beam' and the 'cut of your jib' take a moment

Palabras hermosas realidad prosaica y miserable. Los ciegos serían felices en este país, que para la lengua es paraíso y para los ojos infierno.

Gabriel, te gusta que te manden los franceses y que con su lengua que no entiendes, te digan "haz esto, haz lo otro, y que entren en tu casa y que te hagan ser soldado de Napoleón, y que España no sea España, vamos al decir, que nosotros no seamos como nos da la gana de ser sino como el Emperador quiera que seamos?

Los ciegos serían felices en este país, que para la lengua es paraíso y para los ojos infierno.

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Le lingue straniere ringiovaniscono i pensieri.

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

By comparing my work afterward with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

For the studies, first they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good grammar, either that now used, or any better: and while this is doing, their speech is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear pronunciation, as near as may be to the Italian, especially in the vowels.

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better languages than the unlearned; but still it is nonsense.

Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using Big Words that some of us can't understand ... and one sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the Scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something.

Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using big words that some of us can't understand and one sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way the scholars can appear superior, and will not likely be suspected of not knowing something. After all, from the scholarly point of view, it's practically a crime to not know everything.

In other words, knowledge and experience do not necessarily speak the same language.