Quotes About Linguistics

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.

For example, in Malay, there are pronunciations that are similar to Chinese.

There is no other language as similar to Hebrew like Arabic.

These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.

French and German illustrate the misleading character of apparent grammatical simplicity just as well.

To have a second language is to have a second soul, said Charlemagne around 800 AD. Each language has its own cognitive toolkit, said psychologist/linguist Lera Boroditsky in 2010 AD.

Did you know there are 32 names for love in one of the Eskimo language? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have more ways to say it.

Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages? August said. And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving a Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have more ways to say it?

She spoke the language of the Scottish Highlands (which is like singing).

Which demomstrates the sad poverty of English launguage...

Do you really know what catalexis is?" "Not a clue. I heard you mention it once. It stuck in my memory because it sounds like a cross between a Cadillac and a Lexus.

His mouth curved. "Do you really know what catalexis is?" "Not a clue. I heard you mention it once. It stuck in my memory because it sounds like a cross between a Cadillac and a Lexus.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

Mångata. Em sueco, o reflexo da Lua que forma uma estrada na água.

I have just had a thought about the cut of the Minerva's spanker-boom.' 'How little I understand of that sentence,' she said, admiring his drawing. 'And is there truly something on a ship called a f'c'sle? It seems to have an unwarranted excess of apostrophes. My suspicion is that when we landlubbers are not by, seamen do not use these words at all and talk quite normally.

by afternoon was lost in a sea of Russian idioms. Kogda rak na goryeh svistnyet = When the crawfish whistles on a mountain = When pigs fly. Sdelatz slona iz mukha = Make an elephant out of a fly = Make a mountain out of a molehill. S dokhlogo kozla i shersti klok = Even from the dead goat, even a piece of wool is worth something =

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

I learned to interpret the ancient pictograph codices and read Nahuatl, the Aztec language.

After all, the Indo-European word cunt was derived from the goddess Kunda or Cunti, and shares the same root as kin and country.

The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!

Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.