Quotes About Language

Mug of Joe," grunts Johnny. "Mocha venti with an extra shot for me, no cream," I add. "Anything else?" I shake my head and she wanders off. Johnny looks suspicious. "Since when do you speak Starbucks?" I shrug. "It's not as if I can help it; they've got our office surrounded, and they don't like it if you try to order in English." We wait

O. A. Manning's poetry

Language does control how you think, and if you don't have a word for it, you won't think of it.

Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe. The visible carries all the invisible on its back. Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses, what touches me As though I didn't exist? What is it that keeps on moving, a tiny pillar of smoke Erect on its hind legs, loose in the hollow grasses? A word I don't know yet, a little word, containing infinity, Noiseless and unrepentant, in sift through the dry grass.

Arrange your unutterable alphabet, my man, / and hold tight. / It's all you've got, a naming of things, and not so beautiful.

I used to think the power of words was inexhaustible, That how we said the world was how it was, and how it would be, I used to imagine that word-sway and word thunder Would silence the Silence and all that, That words were the Word, That language could lead us inexplicably to grace, As though it were geographical. I used to think these things when I was young. I still do.

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what good or bad language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do.

Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in the child's environment. And fitness, because we have competition, can be measured by the compatibility of a grammar with what a child hears in a particular linguistic environment. This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes.

When men learnt to talk in the beginning of the civilised word they used language not as a means of communication alone but as a means of excluding others--using it as a way of setting themselves apart and shutting out strangers.

Words were only an approximation of meaning. The meaning escaped between the words, dissolved, disappeared, like fog fading away between iron bars.

he—I do wish somebody would think up a new collective pronoun—

We do have to be on guard these days or we're likely to get swatted by a belligerent pronoun or hit with a preposition we didn't see coming. These are perilous times for the English language, in case you hadn't noticed.

from Diana to Deborah, 8 May 1998) Talking of language difficulty Tony Lambton says Selwyn Lloyd introduced him to Khrushchev saying 'He's the best shot in England,' and the translator said 'Lord Lambton is to be shot tomorrow.' Khrushchev thought it quite normal but patted him on the shoulder kindly.

Political correctness is tyranny with manners.

COLD WORDS FREEZE PEOPLE, AND HOT WORDS SCORCH THEM, AND BITTER WORDS MAKE THEM BITTER, AND WRATHFUL WORDS MAKE THEM WRATHFUL. KIND WORDS . . . SOOTHE, QUIET, AND COMFORT THE HEARER. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten

The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious way. In other words, we play politics with language, and in so doing conceal the reality and the complexity of our situation from ourselves and from those foolish enough to put their trust in us.

If it failed to give them a song, it at least gave them a tongue for sighing.

This does not in any way close the argument for the development of African languages by the intervention of writers and governments. But we do not have to falsify our history in the process. That would be playing politics. The words of the Czech novelist Kundera should ring in our ears: Those who seek power passionately do so not to change the present or the future but the past—to rewrite history. There is no cause for writers to join their ranks.

Language is too grand for these chaps; let's give them dialects!

Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.