Quotes About Language

My first audition happened to be for 'Kindergarten Cop,' and I took that role. I was only starting to learn English at that point. Spanish is my first language, so they made me a speaking character in the movie. I didn't really know I was shooting a movie. I was just having a lot of fun with 30 kids my own age.

The starting point for English work must be the ability to handle effectively their own experience. Oral work, written work and the discussion of literature must create an atmosphere in which the pupils become confident of the full acceptability of the material of their own experience.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

I honestly don't remember when and why I started calling my mom 'Momsi'. These are family things; it starts for some reason. It's not that I just call her Momsi; I call her other things as well!

I've always had a problem with conventional punctuation of dialogue because it does seem to me to set it off too much from the narrative. I mean, in life, things don't stop while somebody says something, and then stuff starts up again; it's all happening at once.

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

Lots of people speak Afrikaans. It's not a statement; it's just a language that we use to communicate. It has its own flavour; it's got its own slang. People laugh. People like it. They like us being open.

With no more than six levels of misquotation, any statement can be made to say whatever you wish.

I sing in Arabic as a statement. It's art, and it's a challenge.

The language of any joint statement between two countries is mulled over many times before it becomes final.

Can I get a mochaccino?': a statement that, for many, is worse than any number of nails down a blackboard. Not on account of the coffee - most of us drink Ventis aplenty these days - rather it's the 'can I get?' - three words that regularly top the list of British bugbears.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

Everybody in this public arena makes statements and gets interpreted different ways.

Of all the depressing abuses of language in business, there is none that gets me so incensed as the rampant overuse of the word 'passionate' in company slogans, marketing blurbs, mission statements and on the sides of vans.

I get better coverage on my Spanish stations than I do on my English stations.

All of us who are flying on international space stations speak some Russian and speak some English. Both the languages are needed to fly in a Russian spacecraft and communicate with your colleagues.

Statistics is the grammar of science.

Math is a language that you use to describe statistics, but really it's about collecting information and putting it in an order that makes sense.

Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context.

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others.

One notable feature is that English doesn't have much of a system for expressing relative social status.

It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

Apparently, there are as many as 880 spoken languages in India, out of which 31 languages have been given an official status. To hear, decode, process, understand, speak, wait for the next person to decode your message, process, understand and then reply is to have a conversation.