Quotes About Language

To speak French does not mean wits.

Such verbal litter is to language as Muzak is to music. As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.

They said 'ski', but they heard 'vodka'!

I don't know anything but the simplest rules of English grammar, and I seldom consciously apply them. Nevertheless, I instinctively write correctly and, I like to think, in an interesting fashion. I know when something sounds right and when it doesn't, and I can tell the difference without hesitation, even when writing at breakneck speed. How do I do this? I haven't the faintest idea.

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.

Del resto, non tutto al mondo deve essere detto, scritto, stampato e tradotto. Tra le persone resta molto di inespresso e taciuto, ma comunque di vivo e duraturo. E spesso questo è quanto di migliore e più luminoso ci sia in noi.

Speaking of things robs them of half their terrors.

It is so subtle to write things that have no meaning

remembering that human beings cannot produce 20,000 unique sounds, even if you were to include belching and hawking great globs of phlegm (which I think counts in Chinese), the linguistic powers that be--whoever they are--threw in tones, possibly to ensure that no foreigner over the ages of thirty would have any chance whatsoever of understanding that Chinese language.

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

The thing was, Qhuinn felt like he wanted to explain things. Unfortunately, and unlike his slut cousin, Saxton the Cocksucker, he had no gift with words.

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth. (Rev. 5:9–10)

Maybe he does have a choice to make, but everything I feel, everything I know says absoloutely that choice will be you She speaks French and Italian. That bitch.

Just shut your mouth, you ignorant twat. Aw, Dallas, he called me a twat. How come you get to be a bitch, but I only get to be a twat. It's the rank, Eve told her. You'll make bitch one day. Thanks. That means a lot to me.

How's it going down there? It's weird. They're too polite, they talk funny, and stuff has too much shine on it. But the coffee's worse than Central's, so that's something.

Well now, this must be love. You sharing the biscuits." "They're cookies. Biscuits are hot bread you smother in butter or gravy. Remember which side of the Atlantic you're on, ace.

I speak sarcasm fluently.

How does hanky-panky translate to sex? Who comes up with words like that? Probably people who don't have sex

Someone had painted FUK U on the dented trunk. What does it say about the literacy rate when you can even spell fuck. It's sad, Eve decided.

Divorced him—hired a fucking shark lawyer—excuse the language." "No problem. Cops hear words like lawyer all the time." Fanny

Both men refer to Carly Fisher as a girl—a small thing, maybe, but it shows an innate lack of respect for females in the workplace.

He does not know what freedom is. Freedom is a word, less than a word, a noise, one of the multitude of noises I make when I open my mouth.

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone(117).

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.