Quotes About Language

Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

I hardly grew up mono-lingually! I was raised religious, so there's a tradition of semi-access to a second language. When I learned my ABCs, they taught us our Aleph-Bet at the same time.

Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.

Didgeridoo is a name that white people gave it when they came to Australia, from the sound that it makes. Its traditional name is yidaki.

I have been writing fairy tales for as long as I can remember. Not much has changed in terms of my natural attraction to the narrative techniques of fairy tales. My appreciation of them in the traditional stories has deepened, especially of flat and unadorned language, intuitive logic, abstraction, and everyday magic.

I have always lived abroad, but inside my family, we always speak in Bosnian and preserve all the Bosnian traditions. So it's always inside me, always in my heart.

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

Cultures, along with the religions that shape and nurture them, are value systems, sets of traditions and habits clustered around one or several languages, producing meaning: for the self, for the here and now, for the community, for life.

Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation.

A common creation demands a common sacrifice, and perhaps not the least potent argument in favour of a constructed international language is the fact that it is equally foreign, or apparently so, to the traditions of all nationalities.

Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.

Identity for Jews like us was shaped by cultural practices and family traditions rather than allegiances of place or language or class, because those things continued to be redefined for us. Drag operates along similar lines.

As a note, I never once refer to 'Train' as a game in the rules, and I also never refer to the participants as players.

I think when you have to train an accent, it just takes you absolutely into another spectrum of the character.

I trained to become a sign-language interpreter because it helps you read physical expression and the emotions of body language.

Well, I'm trained as a classicist, so I like to read the Greeks and Romans.

I always serve the writer first because I'm English trained, even though I'm American.

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.

I don't aspire to just play things that are like me. Whether the accent is Taiwanese or British or Canadian - that is the very craft in which I was trained. It is my absolute privilege and honor to do that.

Scientists aren't necessarily good communicators, because they aren't trained to be good communicators.

I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it's ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself.

I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.

I can speak French, understand Gaelic and know my history. That's the training music has given me.

I think what medical training does is it gives you the language, the tools to look up facts. I think medical training gives you a sense of how to approach a problem, how to look at symptoms and go down the list of what it might be.