Quotes About Language

Fine," Vanto said. The musculature of his throat relaxes partially, but not fully. "Personally, I'd be a lot more concerned about him, but that's up to you. But I'm still the bottom man on the roster. Why do you even care about me?" "You are my translator. You hold my words in your hand, and their meanings. A misjudged translation will confuse or anger. A deliberate error could lead to death.

If di-Master Strinni knew any sort of sign language, it would be the Human variety.

Cats cant speak, that's common sense. -Yoruichi

And I learned that it's a bad idea to curse if you're in trouble, but a good idea to sing, if you can.

If a society were based on only a common positive characteristic (the same language, for instance), this characteristic would not in any way act as a control on people's behavior. It would not stop them, as Lévi-Strauss puts it, from doing just what they please, in the way that prohibition, and specifically the incest prohibition, does.

After he got hammered one night at a high place about Lens Lake called the Grade, his parents found him standing in the kitchen. What if there was a language with only one word in it? he asked. It would be easy to learn, said his mother. And with that word they would say everything every time they spoke, said Pierre. Yeah, that would be some language, said his father. What are you on? Just drinking, said Pierre. Just good old American drinking.

So; in the beginning was the Word, but ten nanoseconds later there was a twelve-volume dictionary, and ten nanoseconds after that a Library of Congress, with 90 per cent of the books in foreign languages. It's probably not possible after such a lapse of time to find out what the original Word was. Given the consequences, however, it could well have been oops.

And if I've got to die, I want to die an editor.

I remember hearing that one very small allied contingent from a non-Greek city somewhere in the far south of Sicily had been completely wiped out except for a single man, and that for days afterwards he wandered round the camp looking completely lost, since there was no one left alive who could speak his language. I knew how he felt.

As was usual in Tilling, the presence of the Wyses curbed the tongued and improved the manner of those around them...A silence generally fell on the company after Mr. Wyse had finished speaking, his language was so fine, so Augustan that it seemed a pity to defile its memory with effusions in the sugar tongue.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa, who has been the Dalai Lama's chief English translator for more than twenty years, shared an insight with us recently about the nature of creativity. Jinpa pointed out that there's no word in the Tibetan language for "creativity" or "being creative." The closest translation is "natural." In other words, if you want to be more creative, you just have to be more natural.

efturryd geenuz iz speel iboot whut wuz right nwhut wuz rang boot this nthat nthi nix thing a saytiz thi bloke nwhut izzit yi caw yir joab Jimmy am a liason-co-ordinator hi sayz ah good as sayz a liason-co-ordinator jist whut this erra needs whut way aw thi unimployment inaw thi bevvyin n thi boayz runnin amock n thi hoassyz fawnty bits n thi wummin n tranquilizers it last thiv sent uz a liason-co-ordinator wia degree in fuck knows whut getn peyd fur no known whut thi fuck ti day way it.

Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.

Faites de beaux rêves, monsieur, she called as she put out the light. Switters had always loved that expression, Make fine dreams. In contrast to the English, Have sweet dreams, the French implied that the sleeper was not a passive spectator, a captive audience, but had some control over and must accept some responsiblity for his or her dreaming. Moreover, a fine dream had much wider connotations than a sweet one.

Hi. Honey! exclaimed Patsy. Good to hear your voice! Listen, I oughtta go pull my robe on 'fore we commence. You caught me nekkid as a jaybird. 'Nekkid' or 'naked,' mama? What's the blessed difference? Are you making Yankee fun of the way I talk? The way you used to talk? No, no, mama, let me tell you. Naked means you just don't have any clothes on. Nekkid means you don't have any clothes on and you're fixing to get into trouble.

There are no such things as synonyms! he practically shouted. Deluge is not the same as flood.

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: Everything is connected. Everything . Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language.

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.

Claude and Marcel LeFever were speaking in French. This simultaneous English translation is being beamed to the reader via literary satellite.)

Okay, it is what it is and I am what I it, but its isness and my itness seem to be stretching the meaning of is and it.

every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.

Among the Haida Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the verb for making poetry is the same as the verb to breathe.

There are no such things as synonyms!" he practically shouted.