Quotes About Linguistics

Although the language of North Korea and South Korea is similar, there are big differences in the vocabulary.

I've read that an average dog possesses a vocabulary of 200-300 words, which is enough for him to have his own Twitter account.

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

I'm a vocabulary nerd.

Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.

To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.

English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach.

I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.

As you know, there are certain languages that lend themselves very easily to vocal use.

It's interesting how people are sensitive to language and how it works.

I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.

There's a fashion abroad generally to speak the language as badly as possible. I'm of a mind to start a society for the reinstatement of the letter 't' and the banishment of the glottal stop.

I barely speak English.

If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)

I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits....

The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jews have four hundred for schmuck.

You are a schmuck," I informed the hero. "You're not using the word correctly," he said. "Yes I am," I said.

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

Hay quienes hablan un idioma con muchas eses, que ha de ser español, puesto que quienes lo hablan son despreciados.

What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech

A word's fate depends on the variety of its contexts, on the frequency of its usage.

a particularly American ability to come up with consistently dreadful names for new things. Just as there is an inspiring national talent to invent stuff and to think forward, so there is an equal and opposite imaginative black hole when it comes to naming the stuff: the conflation and truncation of words, adding extraneous vowels and hyphens to the portmanteau.