Quotes About Language

much of the writing of physicists barely reaches the level of prose.

I have in mind here poetry in a broader sense: language chosen for aesthetic effect, rather than in an attempt to say clearly what one actually believes to be true.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

Why isn't the word "phonetically" spelled with an "f"?

If a mute kid swears, should his mother wash his hands with soap?

Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

Why are they called buildings when they're already finished? Shouldn't they be called builts?

Sometimes I talk to myself in languages I'm unfamiliar with... just to screw with my subconscious.

Do Roman paramedics refer to IV's as '4's'?

Do the people in Australia call the rest of the world 'Up Over'?

My friend has a baby. I'm recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.

If a word in the dictionary were mispelled, how would we know?

I was reading the dictionary, I thought it was a poem about everything

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all can understand.

Theirs was a private language, not shared with the rest of the world, and so exempt from censure, sheer burlesque.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

In the hieroglyphic script, the power of the words were matched by the power of the symbols themselves. The symbols were regarded as being so powerful, precautions had to be taken to prevent them from taking on a life of their own.

Their language is that of dreams and memories.

This was what he enjoyed most; a game of words.

She cringed at the clichè.

Poetry is its own medium it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an environment.

If we ever start communicating with living creatures from other planets, the number one priority is, how are you going to communicate information? Even between different cultures here on Earth, you get into communication problems.