Quotes About Language

the first rule of Moritz Haupt for interpreting the classics,—'Man soll nicht übersetzen.' ['Do not translate':

The trouble with words is that you can really talk yourself into a corner. You can't fuck yourself into a corner. That's a man talking, muttered Hana.

Words are tricky things, a friend of his has told him, they're much more tricky than violins.

His conversations lost some of their syllables out of shyness.

as human beings, we must inevitably see the universe from a centre lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms of a human language shaped by the exigencies of human intercourse. Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity.

Polanyi writes that there exists unspecifiable and unarticulated knowledge among scientists that is not susceptible to language and usually is dismissed in philosophy of science.

In ancient Greece, the word for cook, butcher, and priest was the same -- mageiros -- and the word shares an etymological root with magic.

It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.) .

We simply don't have the words to convey the force of these perceptions to our straight selves, perhaps because they are the kinds of perceptions that precede words.

which the Indians called barbacoa

Writing is about music...finding the music of a sentence....

Music is a simulation of something, but language is the greatest thing we possess.

Being a poet, the advantages of dyslexia are many, affording me sensitivity to the musical nuances of language and the ability to juggle complicated ideas and narratives simultaneously.

Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

The greatest sin of the academic left is that it has become fundamentally aristocratic, writing in bizarre jargon that makes cliches seem abstruse. If you can't explain your ideal to a fairly intelligent 12-year-old, it's probably your own fault.

Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.

Words change over time. 'Condescending,' for instance, was once a good thing to be. It meant that a person was willing to interact politely with people of lower social ranks. In Jane Austen's world, a lady praised for her condescension was receiving a sincere compliment.

I want mainstream artists to accept Latino artists as equals without us having to sing in English.

I get excited when I sing in a new language.

My grandma said - when I was really young and I'd sing along to the radio - why do you sing in an American accent? I guess it was because a lot of the music I was listening to had American vocalists.

I think foreign countries really do like it when American artists sing in their language. And when you go over there and say, 'Hi, how are you?' in their language, they love it. It makes them feel like you're doing it just for them. We in America take so much for granted.

We sing in English, not mimicking some American rock singer's accent. That's just pretending to be something you ain't.

I don't think I ever really knew the right words to 'Hava Nagilah,' which isn't great for a Jewish singer.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.