Quotes About Language

Your phraseology is obscure, but I think I understand.

There was something ghost-like and insubstantial about gases to these early chemists. They called liquids that turned into gases easily, spirits. Methyl alcohol, they called wood spirit; ethyl alcohol, wine spirit. Even today, alcoholic beverages are frequently referred to as spirits. (Modern Arabs, from whose language the word alcohol was taken, call ethyl alcohol spirit from the English. This is a queer exchange.)

The Foundation has secrets. They have books, old books - so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and may use them.

There was something I tried to put in, Gottstein, but between my not knowing how to phrase it and Earth's reluctance to grasp my meaning, we ended up not communicating.

how much is 2+2? Suppose Joseph says: 2+2 = purple, while Maxwell says: 2+2 = 17. Both are wrong but isn't it fair to say that Joseph is wronger than Maxwell? Suppose you said: 2+2=an integer. You'd be right, wouldn't you? Or suppose you said: 2+2=an even integer. You'd be rather righter. Or suppose you said:2+2=3.999. Wouldn't you be nearly right?

Originalmente el lenguaje fue el medio por el cual el hombre aprendió, de forma imperfecta, a transmitir las ideas y emociones de su mente. Estableciendo arbitrarios sonidos y combinaciones de los mismos que representasen ciertos matices mentales, desarrolló un método de comunicación, método que con su torpeza y falta de adecuación hizo degenerar toda la delicadeza de la mente en roscas señales guturales.

so that one has to say 'I/we/Gaia' as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible.

Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication—but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Las palabras son un sustituto bastante confuso de las ecuaciones matemáticas.

It merely required the use of that much-neglected commodity—common sense. You see, there is a branch of human knowledge known as symbolic logic, which can be used to prune away all sorts of clogging deadwood that clutters up human language.

She had learned to drink in Russia.

when everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars

She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she'd been born with it or baptized it, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of 'beauty' and 'twilight' and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words.

El afecto del comienzo evolucionó en la medida en que maduraban, pero nunca hablaban de eso. Carecían de palabras para describir ese sentimiento y temían que al hacerlo se rompiera como el cristal. Expresar su relación en palabras significaba definirla, ponerle limites, reducirla; si no se mencionaba permanecía libre e incontaminada.

Se debe tener mucho cuidado con los nombres de las personas y los seres vivos, porque al pronunciarlos se toca su corazón y entramos dentro de su fuerza vital

Next to the tree was a short, broad-shouldered Asian man in overalls and a straw hat, leaning on a spade. His face was weathered, and in a halting English difficult to follow, he told Alma that this moment was beautiful, but that it would last only a few days before the blooms fell like rain to the ground; much better was the memory of the cherry tree in bloom, because that would last all year, until the following spring.

In the Chinese language, do you know what the characters for 'crisis' are? 'Danger' plus 'opportunity.

Word by word I have created the person I am and the invented country in which I live.

Words are free, she tried to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers.

No me preguntes lo que no quieres que te conteste.

Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: "snack" and "quickie," to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up.

Until he was four, Marcel didn't call her "mother" but "señora." The first words he said were "white wine" in Catalan, spoken in his playpen behind the tavern counter.

What I learned then helps now in my writing: working under pressure, conducting an interview, doing research, using the language efficiently. I never forget that a book is not an end in itself. Just like a newspaper or a magazine, a book is a means of communication, which is why I try to grab the reader by the throat and not let go to the end.

Para tí el lenguaje es un hilo inagotable que tejes como si la vida se hiciera al contarla.