Quotes About Linguistics

Amaro likes words. . . . I think he enjoys their taste.

The object of linguistics is language; that of poetics is concrete utterance. Language is an institution, a formal system which constitutes, for the hypothetical speaker, a "competence"; it is a virtual object. Speech (the poetic utterance, for our purposes) is an individual act which formulates a concrete discourse; it is a "performance".

There is something maddeningly attractive about the untranslatable, about a word that goes silent in transit.

Note that the word 'mute' is regarded by linguists as an onomatopoeic formation referring not to silence but to a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes to show the truth by allowing to be seen hiding.

His interviews revealed that the majority of Sak's employees, half of Macy's, but only one-fifth of Klein's sounded the 'r' clearly, bearing out his theory that a more emphasized 'r' was now the more prestigious pronunciation, and that social class is inscribed in the pronunciation of even a single sound.

I say 'incantation' a lot, when what I really mean 'incarnation.' It's a programmed mistake.

Even when I speak English to my parents, I'll say an English word differently to my Chinese parents and friends than I do to my English-speaking friends - you know, I'll pronounce 'McDonald's' differently, because it feels right, and that's what I'm used to.

I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly.

I'd love to master another language properly.

The way we speak is very different from the way we write - especially from the way we write continuous prose.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

I enjoy using words. Or rather: I enjoy making words work.

There is nothing in this life so nice and so Gaelic as truly true Gaelic Gaels who speak in true Gaelic Gaelic about the truly Gaelic language.

I'm a massive fan of the dictionary.

I was fascinated by the shape of words even before I knew what they meant.

I love dialects and accents; they're something that really resonate with me and that I find fascinating.

Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.

I remember as a child of five or six lying in the bath marvelling at the different languages displayed on the shampoo bottles around me. From that moment on it was always words not numbers that held a fascination for me.

Language changes very fast.

You can have your own language. You can have your own dialect; you can have your own way of saying things, but if you don't actually understand the way the language fits together, it's chaos.

A degree of lying - you know, white lies - seems to be inherent in all languages and all forms of communication.

'Nuclear' is nothing but trouble. Do you say 'new-clear' or do you say 'nuke-you-ler'? Whoever invented that word had obviously never studied the human mouth. We don't have enough muscles in our face to make that group of letters come out smoothly. The word is missing a middle syllable, for cryin' out loud.

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

I like 'Yabai!' That just rolls off the tongue. It means sick, wicked in Japanese.