Quotes About Language

After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.

You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather ordinary or formal thing - they don't usually mix - but 'gobsmacked' is a perfect exception to that rule.

Hit records create slang, and if you create slang, you get into a broader conversation level.

I was able to make up lots of portementos, literally hundreds and hundreds of words... See, I find that mine don't have any meanings. They're not proper. Although I've got a great dictionary of them. It's like the Cockney rhyming slang or something.

Almost half the adult population finds discussing the subject of money difficult. Slang words help us to navigate these conversations by making us feel more comfortable and confident.

Dutch is our first language. When you talk to older people, you speak Dutch. It's more respectful. The local language, you talk with your friends. You don't talk to your parents like that with the local slang.

'Shkoff' is to eat. 'Shkiaff' is to slap. Like, 'Gettouttahere I'm gonna give you a couple of shkiaffs,' or, 'Forget presentation, just shkiaff the food onto the plate.'

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.

When I lived in Argentina I had to change my sense of humour to fit in - I became a slapstick character because that's how I communicated humour when I wasn't quite able to manipulate the language and make a joke.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

At eight, I made a commitment to poetry. Until then, I thought I'd be a policeman. But I went a whole night without sleeping, and the next day the world had changed. It needed a different language.

The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere 'assonance' rather than that of actual rhyme.

There is something in the micro-gestures in Australia that I just understand. It's something I grew up with - how people interact, the slight differences in language and gestures, that I just understand and it puts me at ease.

I like to call everyone that I find slightly annoying a 'sociopath.'

Valyrian is oddly easier than Dothraki. It's got a more lyrical flow to it that feels more familiar to the way I speak. That makes it slightly easier.

Sometimes how I explain myself to the media can come across in a slightly different way to how I would mean to say things.

Since I grew up in Jammu, all my school and college friends are from there and the area's language, Dogri, is slightly similar to Punjabi, so I understand a bit of Punjabi.

Whenever I write lyrics and an Americanism slips in, I always cut it straight out. I can't use the word 'babe,' for instance. It makes me cringe.

Civilisation is slippery, the word has multiple and contested meanings.

Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation.

I think a lot of Marx was quite sloppy. There was all sorts of politically aggressive language when he lacked arguments for things.

In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.

Well, maybe so, although I don't think I am particularly gifted in languages. In fact, oddly enough, it may have something to do with my being slow at languages.

People probably perceive me as a bit boring because I am a little slow in the humor department, but it's just hard for me to get jokes when they're told in English. I am always the last one to get it.