Quotes About Language

Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate.

I would love to learn other languages, maybe French? My uncle speaks German so maybe also German? Chinese seems to be too difficult.

When I was six and already able to read and write Polish, my uncle the curate taught me Latin. Since he had no suitable textbook, he simply used the breviary.

Being in southwest Detroit, when my dad would want to say anything about me or my brothers or sisters, he would start speaking in Spanish to my uncle and my grandmother because we didn't understand.

You can't be Eazy-E and not move a certain way, basically. So, I studied the culture of it, and also, one of my uncles is from L.A., and he's great. He was like my performance coach. He helped me get the lingo down pat. He helped me get a lot of things down pat because I would talk in that accent for 10 hours a day.

Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they're uncomfortable laughs.

We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation - and the entire biosphere - must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.

I was born into a Turkish family that had acquired Italian citizenship. Many members of the family subsequently became British, French, Brazilian, and German, so there was a bit of everything. It was not uncommon for people in the family to speak seven languages: English, French, Ladino, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, and even Greek.

I still can't believe that I was accepted by Telugu audiences because I don't know Telugu. Without knowing me, the Telugu people gave me their unconditional love.

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along.

We're talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. starting over with accuracy.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

A lot of people use the phrase 'underage violence,' which, to me, is meaningless.

But the underdog socialists' biggest problem isn't that they are wrong. They are not. Their biggest problem is that they're dull. Dull as a doorknob. They've got no story to tell; nor even the language to convey it in.

You must never underestimate the power of the eyebrow.

If you want to underestimate me because I speak like a Mancunian, like the people I grew up with, then so be it at your peril.

You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare.

To make sense to us as physical creatures, any 'truth' must undergo transformations, be couched in certain terms or we couldn't understand it.

My undergraduate degree is in geography and sociology, so I had like no real training with words.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

An assumption underlying almost all comments on interruptions is that they are aggressive, but the line between what's perceived as assertiveness or aggressiveness almost certainly shifts with an interrupter's gender.

Every market we go to, we have a domain-specific language. Every domain-specific language, underneath, has an architecture.

Words like feminism or democracy scare me. They are words with barnacles on them, and you can't see what's underneath.

When people talk about people who are optimistic about gold, they call them 'gold bugs.' A bug is an insect. I don't call equity bugs 'cockroaches.' Do you understand? There is already a negative connotation with the expression of 'gold bug.'