Quotes About Language

Don't flip the script on semantics," Celestial said.

Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we'll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were — ordinary people — and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making.

The fact that they came to our land, I know not why, does that mean we should poison our present and our future? Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we'll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were - ordinary people - and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making.

Hay muchos que nacen mentalmente analfabetos y tienen un lugar en el mundo. Son como cuervos, cuyas lenguas sólo son capaces de escupir, que aprenden palabras sin saber su significado.

When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.

When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force.

We don't normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose thought processes are technologically mediated.

Verba volant, scripta manent. In Tiv you would say, 'Spoken words fly away, written words remain.

My new language is taking shape. It is gestalt oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech. It wouldn't be transcribed in the form of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a whole.

For me, thinking typically meant speaking in an internal voice; as we say in the trade, my thoughts were phonologically coded.

Like physical events with their causal and teleological interpretations, every linguistic event had two possible interpretations: as a transmission of information and as the realization of a plan.

But the only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with a native speaker, and by that I mean asking questions, holding a conversation, that sort of thing.

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.

When Kokwa told the story, he didn't merely use words; he used the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands, the light in his eyes. He told you the story with his whole body, and you understood it the same way. None of that was captured on paper; only the bare words could be written down. And reading just the words gave you only a hint of the experience of listening to Kokwa himself, as if one were licking the pot in which okra had been cooked instead of eating the okra itself.

Our language has two words for what in your language is called 'true.' There is what's right, mimi, and what's precise, vough. In a dispute the principals say what they consider right; they speak mimi. The witnesses, however, are sworn to say precisely what happened; they speak vough. When Sabe has heard what happened he can decide what action is mimi for everyone. But it's not lying if the principals don't speak vough, as long as they speak mimi.

After I've translated all that I know into this language, the patterns I seek should become evident.

As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements.

Moseby explained to Jijingi how each sound a person spoke could be indicated with a different mark on the paper. The marks were arranged in rows like plants in a field; you looked at the marks as if you were walking down a row, made the sound each mark indicated, and you would find yourself speaking what the original person had said. Moseby showed him how to make each of the different marks on a sheet of paper, using a tiny wooden rod that had a core of soot.

Jijingi realized that, if he thought hard about it, he was now able to identify the words when people spoke in an ordinary conversation. The sounds that came from a person's mouth hadn't changed, but he understood them differently; he was aware of the pieces from which the whole was made. He himself had been speaking in words all along. He just hadn't known it until now.

I would have liked to experience more of the heptapods' worldview, to feel the way they feel. Then, perhaps I could immerse myself fully in the necessity of events, as the must, instead of merely wading in its surf for the rest of my life.

My new language is taking shape. It is gestalt oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech.

Speaking this language would be out of the question, given the limited bandwidth of the human larynx.

A dog may understand dozens of commands, but it will never do anything but bark.

No es ninguna coincidencia que <> signifique al mismo tiempo tener esperanza y el acto de respirar. Cuando hablamos, usamos el aliento de nuestros pulmones para darle a nuestros pensamientos una forma física. Los sonidos que emitimos son simultáneamente nuestras intenciones y nuestra fuerza vital. Hablo, Luego soy.