Quotes About Language

Every little movement has a meaning of its own.

I remind my American readers that biscuits in England and Australia are crispy flat things such as you call cookies, and the soft doughy things you call biscuits are what we call scones. And they say we speak the same language…

Padre always told me me language was sulphurous.

Nick demonstrated twenty-three ways of communicating without words by fanning himself with a napkin. "This one means oops, your fly is open, sir, and if you lower the fan a little and look at someone over the top of it, it means wow, I'd like to marry you. But if you do it the other way around, it means ha ha, we are now at war with Spain.

I hate all these crazy verbs, using a subjunctive to get what's happened in the future and the past mixed up.

Bocker", flüsterte Mia mir zu. "Wie bitte?" flüsterte ich zurück. "Biest in Ocker ist einfach zu lang.Nennen wir sie Bocker.

I think I am really irreverent and I pretty much just talk to and about men the way men talk to and about women.

If writing has taught me anything, it's that you don't actually understand anything until you can express it in words.

A dictionary contains all the books ever written, and all the books that will ever be written.

I would like a dictionary though. A dictionary contains all the books ever written and all the books that will ever be written. That's something isn't it? The words aren't in the right order, of course, but it's still something.

In the beginning was the word, and primitive societies venerated poets second only to their leaders. A poet had the power to name and so to control; he was, literally, the living memory of a group or tribe who would perpetuate their history in song; his inspiration was god given and he was in effect a medium.

In 2005, the Global Language Monitor—a nonprofit organization that does exactly what its name suggests—issued a tongue-in-cheek list of the year's most politically correct words and phrases. Top

Jesus is a person, not a proposition; however, language is the means the Spirit uses to enable the gospel to become the all-encompassing framework that allows disciples not only to think but also to situate themselves in relation to the truth, goodness, and beauty of what is in Christ.

North Americans think they know how to speak Christian, but what they say is actually a gross distortion. Either people do not know Christian words at all, or they have heard them but do not know what they mean, or they think they know what they mean when in fact they mean something completely different.

You could, if so inclined, read more Greek texts in the original Greek than the most prestigious Greek nobleman of classical times.

Poetry steps in at those moments when ordinary words fail: poetry as ceremony, as closure to what cannot be closed.

Good programming is not born from mere technical competence. I've seen highly intellectual programmers who can produce intense and impressive algorithms, who know their language standard by heart, but who write the most awful code.

Most of the best programmers I know are also very fluent in their mother's tongue, and typically in other languages as well.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

I say this and it is short and sharp, without elegance, like a bark; but I have no idea how else to start. I am only a fox: I have no elegances of language.

Humans assign words to things and pretend the words are adequate.

Know the difference between its and it's, between lay and lie: you lay the form rejection slip on the table; you lie on the bed filled with the anguish of self-doubt and feelings of utter worthlessness.

The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language: I love my brother, I hate winter, I always lose my keys.

Have you ever heard anyone say 'Abracadabra'? Well, some think it means 'I create as I speak.' So it means we create our world as we speak. Maybe everytime we say something we are helping create our world.