Quotes About Language

Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. Oograah means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.

Mr Vimes, said Mrs Winkings, ve cannot help but notice that you still haf not employed any of our members in the Vatch... Say 'Watch', why don't you? Vimes thought. I know you can. Let the twenty-third letter of the alphabet enter your life.

She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her. The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to she was not she, which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink.

Watering down the currency of expression, causing anything to mean whatever you want it to mean, until nothing is meant and nothing is precise.

Goodbye," Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. "It's such an unpleasant word, isn't it?" QUITE SO. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn't have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time. I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.

Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-contiuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!

An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deid ! Ye cannae tell me that's right!

How many books are there? said Masklin. Hundreds! Thousands! Do you know what they're all about? Gurder looked at him blankly. Do you know what you're saying? he said. No. But I want to find out. They're about everything! You'd never believe it! They're full of words even I don't understand! Can you find a book which tells you how to understand words you don't understand? said Masklin. Gurder hesitated. It's an intriguing thought, he said.

That was great, al' that reading' ye did!' said Rob Anybody. 'I didnae understand a single word o' it!' 'Aye, it must be powerful language if you cannae make oout what the heel it's goin' on aboot!' said another pictsie.

She was never likely to say out loud, "I wish that I could marry a handsome prince," but knowing that if you did you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest, and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as best man definitely made you watch what you said.

What the gods said was heard by each combatant in his own language, and according to his own understanding. It boiled down to: I. This is Not a Game. II. Here and Now, You are Alive.

Perhaps there is something in this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits? It was a cumbersome phrase. Rincewind tried to get his tongue around the thick syllables that were the word in Twoflower's own language. Ecolirix? he tried. Ecro-gnothics? Echo-gnomics? That would do. That sounded about right.

One such accident had turned the librarian into an ape, since when he had resisted all attempts to turn him back, explaining in sign language that life as an orangutan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves into wondering where the next banana was coming from. Anyway, long arms and prehensile feet were ideal for dealing with high shelves.

They writes some bits o' their letters in them wee codies. That's a terrible thing tae do to a reader. It's hard enough readin' the normal words, wi'oot somebody jumblin' them all up.

and all those frogs going 'Rabbit, rabbit'... I think, sir, that it was 'Ribbit, ribbit'... So, what goes 'Rabbit, rabbit'? Rabbits, I think. All the time...

LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS?

It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was "policeman." If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

Words is important, Granny whispered into the night.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.

Ave! Duci novo, similis duci seneci",' murmured Mr Slant, drily as only a zombie can manage. 'Or, as we used to say at school, "Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!"' He gave a little schoolmasterly laugh. He felt at home with dead languages. 'Of course, grammatically that is completely—' 'And that means . . . ?' said Madam. 'Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,' muttered Dr Follett.

He's a man of few words, and he doesn't know what either of them means," people said, but not when he was within hearing.

Ach, noo yer talkin' oour language," said Rob Anybody. "Not…quite," said Tiffany.

Ankh-Morpork people considered that spelling was a sort of optional extra. They believed in it the same way they believed in punctuation; it didn't matter where you put it, so long as it was there.