Quotes About Language

These signs and tokens are of no small value; they speak a universal language and act as a passport to the attention and support of the initiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost so long as memory retains its power….

Do you realize how angry you sound?" must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

I would think for hours how strange it was that some parts of words are silent, just like some parts of our lives. Did the people who wrote the dictionaries decide to mirror language to our lives, or did it just happen that way?

I retreat from my bars, wondering why people who live outside choose such ugly words. Maybe that is what happens when you are outside, and the world clangs and barrels and shouts twenty-four hours a day, from your radio your television your wife your neighbor the lawn mower down the street and the scream of airplanes from the sky. Maybe then you use ugly words to tell life to shut up.

Ebonics is not a separate language. It is ghetto speech and substandard English. To claim that ebonics is a positive way of communicating for blacks is to condemn blacks to menial jobs and economic inferiority. A person who fails to learn correct language skills is forever handicapped in seeking employment.

As a text, the Quran is more than the foundation of the Islamic religion; it is the source of Arabic grammar. It is to Arabic what Homer is to Greek, what Chaucer is to English: a snapshot of an evolving language, frozen forever in time

They fully bloomed in the pages of the Bible and the Quran, where the Sumerian word ilu became transliterated as Elohim in Hebrew and Allah in Arabic.

Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman Empire (ironically, Latin was the language least used in the lands occupied by Rome), enough perhaps to negotiate contracts and deal with customers, but certainly not enough to preach. The only Jews who could communicate comfortably in Greek were the Hellenized Herodian elite, the priestly aristocracy in Judea, and the more educated Diaspora Jews, not the peasants and day laborers of Galilee.

Unlike their brethren in the Holy Land, Diaspora Jews spoke Greek, not Aramaic: Greek was the language of their thought process, the language of their worship.

is possible that Jesus had some basic knowledge of Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman Empire (ironically, Latin was the language least used in the lands occupied by Rome), enough perhaps to negotiate contracts and deal with customers, but certainly not enough to preach. The only Jews who could communicate comfortably in Greek were the Hellenized Herodian elite, the priestly aristocracy in Judea, and the more educated Diaspora Jews, not the peasants and day laborers of Galilee.

Pero cuando estaba con una mujer, y le gustaba el modo que tenía de hablar, se la llevaba a la cama por el entusiasmo que le provocaba verla usar el pretérito perfecto del indicativo, como si a presencia del pasado en el presente justificara cualquier pasión.

No matter how long he lived in the South, Zemurray could never rise above street Spanish overlaid by his American accent, overlaid by his Russian accent. He was all overlay—identity stacked on identity, life stacked on

No matter how long he lived in the South, Zemurray could never rise above street Spanish overlaid by his American accent, overlaid by his Russian accent. He was all overlay—identity stacked on identity, life stacked on life.

Mribus antqus rs stat Rmna virsque. (Ennius Ann. 467.)

Laudant illa, sed ista legunt.

startling—the Romans themselves never read silently, but always aloud; they regarded language as speaking and listening, and viewed writing as merely a convenient means of recording communications spoken and heard.

Vvere est cgitre. (Cicero Tusc. 5.111.)

15. Lbers rud. (lber as adj. means free, but in the m. pl. it can also = children.—rudi, rudre, rudv, rudtum, to instruct, train, educate; a wonderful etymology, meaning lit. to get someone ex/ out of being rudis/ rough, crude, unpolished—so, gentle reader, learn Latin, cease to be "rude," become "erudite," and rejoice in your "erudition"!)

When a style becomes opaque, when you look at it rather than looking through it, the schoolmarmly bell of reproach begins to ring.

Next to 'God', 'love' is the word most mangled in every language.

Two thousand years ago, five thousand, they didn't have a word for imagination, and faith was the best they could come up with for a pretty solemn bunch of followers.

Blaze was stumped for a moment. Then he blurted, "George." "Lovely name! From the Greek. It means, 'to work the earth.'

We call everything a river here. We are that kind of people.

Never say more than is necessary.