Quotes About Language

I want to go to the mountains, I want to go to the sea, I want to go to a place where no one knows me, I want to be lost among the people who speak a language I don't understand at all.

The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the "conventions" of the symbolic system.

Today's syntax is tomorrow's morphology

True language begins when words can join with other words to form an infinite variety of meaningful combinations.

The fact is, we humans don't live directly in the physical universe. We live in a model of the world we have created collectively through language and which we maintain communally. That model was already in existence when we were born; we merely made our way into it as we matured. Becoming an adult meant gaining the ability to imagine the same world as everyone else.

Political correctness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

It's like those kids who grow up in houses where the parents speak different languages and turn out bilingual. If they're exposed to something at an early enough age, they absorb it naturally and becomes just something normal.

Threats are the last resort of a man with no vocabulary.

The squealing little arse-gerbil.

Ah, dammit to hell and blast and nonspecific fornication" I said, when the rivet went shooting off into the grass again. "Is everyone OK with that?" "What's wrong with nonspecific fornication?" Abby demanded. "I don't like my fornication specific.

His accent needs subtitles.

They brought in a mandatory sensitivity training session—which was fine by Cal, given the way some of the guys treated, for example, witnesses from bad hoods and rape victims, except the session turned out to be all about what words they were and weren't allowed to use; nothing about what they were doing, underneath all the words, and how they could do it better.

She was doing a PhD in English literature,' I pointed out. 'I know zip about English literature, Frank. I got an A in my Leaving Cert, but that's it. I don't speak the jargon.

The thing is that many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as Cal can see, have to do with what words you should and shouldn't use for people, based on what problems they have, what race they are, or who they like to sleep with. While Cal agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals.

Everyone was always talking about talking, and the most moral person was the one who yelled at the most other people for doing the talking all wrong.

the session turned out to be all about what words they were and weren't allowed to use; nothing about what they were doing, underneath all the words, and how they could do it better. Everyone was always talking about talking, and the most moral person was the one who yelled at the most other people for doing the talking all wrong.

many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as Cal can see, have to do with what words you should and shouldn't use for people, based on what problems they have, what race they are, or who they like to sleep with. While Cal agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals.

I dinna wish to hear another bluidy word come out o' her Sassenach mouth!

i recommend the phrase 'pineapple ass

The first verses establish an immediate correspondence with what Revelation was later to recount about the creation of humankind: "He [God] taught Adam the names of all things."8 Reason, intelligence, language, and writing will grant people the qualities required to enable them to be God's khalifahs (vicegerents) on earth, and from the very beginning, Quranic Revelation allies recognition of the Creator to knowledge and science, thus echoing the origin of creation itself.9

In France, we leave a single space before and after most punctuation marks. In England, there are generally no spaces before punctuation, and one inserts a double space between sentences.

Could you tell me again what was written on the apple?" "Tê kallistê. Kallista in Greek means 'most beautiful.'" And thus I learned that Philip had considered me beautiful.

The Bengalis saw endless bloodshed and trouble from 1947 to 1971 and this culminated in the Liberation War of 1971. The blood of 3 million Bengalis helped earn this freedom and also proved that religion could never be the foundation of a national identity. Language, culture and history provide the foundations for a national identity.

I hate using that word, career. It always feels like the word bitch is hiding out between the letters.