Quotes About Linguistics

I had to learn to call book jackets 'jackets' rather than 'covers.'

Japanese is a very difficult language.

Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease.

In the Fukien province of China, the Dutch learned the word tay, which means "tea" in the local dialect, and with this sound it was introduced to Europe. In fact, in Ireland and England it was pronounced tay until the start of the eighteenth century, after which the word was derived to tee and then tea—as we know it today.

Does a 'beefsteak' derive it's terminology name from the habit of complaining too often?

But there is, alas, no doubt that we are becoming a vocabulary-deprived nation—nay, planet. Words have been dropping off all through this century, but the loss increased radically in the sixties with the immorality of "limited vocabulary.

Mastery of language affords remarkable power.

The Prison-House of Language

Just having an abstract conversation about linguistic parallelism.

I hate it when my food adjectives its own noun.

Where shall we look for standard English but to the words of a standard man?

There were lots of words which had fallen out of my vocabulary, living abroad so long.

Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language; While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.

I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.

When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year. I used to speak very little but I could understand very well.

I've been collecting linguistic oddities for years and years, ever since I was small. I've got loads of notebooks where I've jotted down things I couldn't make sense of.

English may be the fastest moving language in the world, but there are plenty of concepts, sensations and everyday occurrences which lack a pithy word to describe them. Take the clunkiness of 'the day before yesterday' and 'the day after tomorrow': German provides single words for both.

Well, I like how people talk. I like language. You know, Linda Richman spoke in Yiddish.

The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.

My dad's French, and I spent my summers in France growing up. So I speak French fluently, and obviously, I speak English because I was raised in New York, and I grew up here.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.

Acting in another language is great, and I've done that. But you can't do it as well as you can do it in your own language.

The Australian accent is sort of like going down a step in smartness, you could say, because you guys pronounce things as they're spelled. We add and abbreviate stuff.