Quotes About Linguistics

When we look at the specific effect of the Internet on language, languages asking the question, 'Has English become a different language as a result of the Internet?' the answer has to be no.

What I learned through my research is that the word 'actor,' specifically in reference to those who performed in plays, came about in the late 1500s as a non-gendered word. It applied to all people, regardless of anatomical sex or gender identity.

One of the drawbacks of English is you can't spell things by hearing them.

A lot of people use the dictionary to find out how to spell words.

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries eventually reflect popular choices. And the Internet is allowing more people to influence spelling than ever before.

He spoke nine languages. You know some people can just pick up an instrument and play. My father was like that with languages.

Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they're used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so of the world's languages aren't in such a healthy state.

I am attracted by almost any French word - written or spoken. Before I knew its meaning, I thought 'saucisson' so exquisite that it seemed the perfect name to give a child - until I learned it meant 'sausage!'

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth.

Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

People tried and failed to combine the words Izzy and Ymir. The closest they came was Izmir, but that had been the name of a city in Turkey.

He overrides the warning buzzer, jams the stereo over to Taxiscan, which cruises all the taxi-driver frequencies listening for interesting traffic. Can't understand a fucking word. You could buy tapes, learn-while-you-drive, and learn to speak Taxilinga. It was essential, to get a job in that business.

Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste.

Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us 'scythe' and 'scissors' and 'schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of separation.

D-d-d-dollars." "That's a silly name for money, Jack—no one'll ever take you seriously, talking that way.

It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.

In all countries there was a torrent of what Paul Fussell has called 'high diction': a friend became a 'comrade', a horse became a 'steed', the enemy became the 'foe'.

over half the languages in the world, for example, have fewer than five thousand speakers, and over a thousand languages have under a dozen.

From the language point of view, the present population of the world is not six billion, but something over six thousand.

Languages change, as they pass from the lips of one generation to the next, but there is nothing about this process of transmission which makes for decay or extinction. Like life itself, each new generation can receive the gift of its language afresh. And so it is that languages, unlike any of the people who speak them, need never grow infirm, or die. Every language has a chance of immortality, but this is not to say that it will survive for ever.

Akkadian, the language spoken by Sargon I, the first Assyrian king in 2300 BC, is a close relative of the Arabic spoken by his successor in this same land, Saddam Hussein, in AD 2000; another close relative, the Middle East's old lingua franca, Aramaic, bridges the gap between the decline of Akkadian around 600 BC and the onset of Arabic with the Muslims around AD 600. They are all sister languages within the very close Semitic family.

I could sing in English before I could understand it because I phonetically learned it from the musicals.

I spend a lot of my time just looking at words and grammar and writing things down that I don't know.