Quotes About Linguistics

Even though I have spent literally years of my life trying to learn another language, any other language - and even though I have in the past claimed in several key professional contexts that I speak other languages - I am in fact still trapped inside the bubble of English.

If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'

Kanal' means 'sewer' as well as 'channel'. 'Kanakafü' has echoes of 'Kacke', a baby word for faeces.

The central hypothesis of the theory is that language acquisition occurs in only one way: by understanding messages.

And then there are the Germans. Do you know, they form words by just sticking them together, so that their word for 'Gatling gun' literally translates into 'mechanicaldeviceshootingwithoutcockingrifle?' The words get longer still. No word is too long for a German because it's quite impossible to bore a German. You cannot entertain a Norwegian, you cannot bore a German, and you cannot educate an American or a chimpanzee.

The change of language is a change in reality.

I fancy that the Irish language must have 57 different words for 'rain', in the same way that Inuit has for 'snow'. If, in reality, this is not the case, then I'm really glad I've never bothered to learn Irish'.

The purpose of quantum linguistics is to survey the spirit of linguistics and finding solutions to the common barrier problems faced by means of deliberate use of language.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.

In China, when you get to the airport everyone be talking in American slang.

You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather ordinary or formal thing - they don't usually mix - but 'gobsmacked' is a perfect exception to that rule.

I was able to make up lots of portementos, literally hundreds and hundreds of words... See, I find that mine don't have any meanings. They're not proper. Although I've got a great dictionary of them. It's like the Cockney rhyming slang or something.

The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere 'assonance' rather than that of actual rhyme.

Well, maybe so, although I don't think I am particularly gifted in languages. In fact, oddly enough, it may have something to do with my being slow at languages.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump.

To say "I'm hungry" in French you say "J'ai faim"—"I have hunger"—and when you are finished, you do not say that you are full, but "Je n'ai plus faim"—"I have no more hunger.

Animals cannot speak and understand English

all languages that derive from Latin form the word compassion by combining the prefix meaning with (com-) and the root meaning suffering

I learned to love the feel of good words.

I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various kinds of music.

I love learning languages, and actually computer code is another language as well.

Quotation lovers love rare words.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.