Quotes About Language

But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself. Stephen

The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man.

Batter-Sea is not a word,' I said at last. 'It has no referent. There is nothing in the World corresponding to that combination of sounds.

Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously. Disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.

mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two

Sözcükler, tek baÅŸlar?na insan? k?rmaz oysa. Yaralayan bunun arkas?na saklanan ikiyüzlülüktür.

Lo que dices importa, y la manera en que lo dices también.

Don't cry,nyonda," he murmured. Phillipa took a deep breath. "What does that mean, anyway? Nyonda?" His green gaze held hers. "It's Swahili. It means 'beloved.'" A small smile touched his mouth, and he brushed her cheek again. "You do know I love you, Phillipa. To an alarming degree.

Don't say 'Horse shite,' Amelia-Rose whispered, drawing even with him. What should I call it, then, digested equine grass lumps?

Keating can be somewhat liberal with the profanity, so I shall substitute the word 'albatross' where necessary, and you may read that part privately later.

The study of a language . . . allows its students to hear a people's 'interpretation (or misinterpretation) of messages from environment to human.' The spoken word reveals, upon reflection, that to which its speakers first chose to listen, then ponder, then live by.

Gr-EEN! YEL-low! OR-ange!" Griffin cries in quick succession. He's just naming random colors—all except the right one. Except, of course, his words aren't really chosen at random. "You notice he always says the name of a color," Arlene points out. "He understands the category.

I plan to learn enough to read you like a book. I plan to give this book to you and know you'll read it, so our minds may meet across these pages, in the colorful country of another writer's language, where we can flourish in the knowledge that we are learning how to speak to one another; and so our mouths will know what to do when they finally come together.

Why even call it a fuck? Why not be clear and call it a seminal emission in a preapproved orifice?

It's said that actions speak louder than words," he went on, "but we still need words. We need to speak and we need to be heard".

Para el monolingüe no hay sino una lengua desde donde se piensa un solo mundo, y lo distinto siempre se da -si es que se da- peligrosamente: en traducción.

A pesar de que tiene dos lenguas, el bilingüe habla como si siempre le faltara algo, en permanente estado de necesidad.

Siempre se escribe desde una ausencia: la elección de un idioma automáticamente significa el afantasmamiento del otro pero nunca su desaparición.

Los ejemplos que recuerdo, como se verá, remiten (o re-tornan) a la casa, a la cuchara y a la olla; remiten a lo casero, aunque las lenguas del sujeto bilingüe nunca lo son. La mezcla, el ir y venir, el switching pertenece al dominio de lo unheimliche que es, precisamente, lo que sacude la fundación de la casa.

Quiérase o no, siempre se es bilingüe desde una lengua, aquella en la que uno se aposenta primero, siquiera provisoriamente, aquella en la que uno se reconoce.

I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

Feel like the recluse who comes out into the world with a life-saving gospel to find everybody has learned a new language in the meantime and can't understand a word he's saying.

On the train: staring hypnotized at the blackness outside the window, feeling the incomparable rhythmic language of the wheels, clacking out nursery rhymes, summing up moments of the mind like the chant of a broken record: god is dead, god is dead. going, going, going. and the pure bliss of this, the erotic rocking of the coach. France splits open like a ripe fig in the mind; we are raping the land, we are not stopping.