Quotes About Language

It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.

With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.

All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.

Profanity is the common crutch of the conversational cripple. —DAVID KEUCK

I've never liked euphemisms. I don't say "passed away." I say "dead.

I said, "No, you're physically challenged. You're breathing hard from climbing the stairs. I'm disabled.

the words become inevitable through my connection with their meaning,

What really alarms me about President Bush's "War on Terrorism" is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is "Terrorism" going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.

Ah! The English language was a wonderful thing! You could always find the right word. He only wished he could speak the language.

You must guard your mouth, because no matter what you say, you are launching weapons of one sort or another.

To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information.

Conversation itself has rules, which is why the conversationalist who insists that others must speak his language is a boor. To have a voice of one's own is to acknowledge other voices.

Word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper.

Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language, yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.

Pendidikan zaman sekarang yagn telah bergantung pada huruf dan bahasa mungkin telah menyebabkan kemunduran kepekaan anak-anak untuk melihat alam lewat hati, menangkap bisikan Tuhan dan menerima ilham (Pak Kobayashi, hal. 75)

La dicha es una cosa tan rara en este mundo, que el hombre no ha pensado en inventar palabras para expresarla, mientras el vocabulario de los sufrimientos morales y físicos llena innumerables columnas en los diccionarios de todas las lenguas.

Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.

Use an apostrophe in bachelor's degree, a master's, etc., but there is no possessive in Bachelor of Arts or Master of Science.

Sting of a bee kills one person but sting of words hurt an entire nations

The speech of man is like embroidered tapestries, since like them this too has to be extended in order to display its patterns, but when it is rolled up it conceals and distorts them.

Now begins a torrent of words and a trickling of sense.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Words tend to bounce off nature as they try to deliver nature's language into the hands of another language foreign to it.

Att lämna sitt språk är som lämna sin själ