Quotes About Linguistics

I want to be able to speak every language. If I could have any talent and I get to choose it, and be naturally gifted and speak every language. It's not going to happen, but it sure would be nice. It's a good wish.

On a attribué à Al Farabi, autre génie universel, la connaissance de 70 langues.

Joan" was an Anglicized pronunciation of the French "Jeanne

I'll have you know I keep detailed notes. Mistakes sometimes occur in translation.' 'Why do your notes need translating?' 'I write them in Aramaic. It's a three-thousand-year-old language so I have to make up a lot of words.

Latin, Greek, and English, plus a smattering of Italian and fucking French." "Fucking French, you say? Well . . ." "Oui," said I, in perfect fucking French.

Ooo ahe-e, I aya oa a, she said in yawnspeak, a language - not unlike Hawaiian - known for its paucity of consonants.

but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and

William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

tüm dilleri konuÅŸtuÄŸunu, ama hiçbirini bilmediÄŸini anlad?m.

No, eso es árabe, tonto! ¡Tenía razón Bacon cuando decía que el primer deber de un sabio es el de estudiar las lenguas! —¡Pero tampoco vos sabéis árabe! —replicaba yo picado. Y Guillermo respondía: —¡Pero al menos me doy cuenta cuando algo está en árabe!

A pun is its own reword.

Nuestro honorable sargento dominaba todas las lenguas, excepto las extranjeras.

Geriye ne kalm??t? ki? Her 'merhaba', 'hoÅŸça kal' anlam?na geliyordu.

French is a foreign language, but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.

Wie wird das eigentlich mit der Sprache?" fragte die Prinzessin, als wir im Zug nach Helsingör saßen. "Du warst doch schon mal da. Sprichst du denn nun gut schwedisch?" »Ich mache das so«, sagte ich. »Erst spreche ich deutsch, und wenn sie das nicht verstehn, englisch, und wenn sie das nicht verstehn, platt - und wenn das nichts hilft, dann hänge ich an die deutschen Wörter die Endung as an, und dieses Sprech-as verstehas sie ganz gut.«

but you can't forbid a word, so there.

Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined.

My uncle said he used to start and end all his sentences with "motherfucker" because he learned his English from his black customers when he was a clothing wholesaler in New York.

used personal and place-names in their transliteration

el «prefijo fantástico» no es más que un caso particular del «binomio fantástico», en que los dos componentes son el prefijo escogido para originar nuevas palabras y la palabra primitiva escogida para ser promocionada gracias a la deformación.

John MacKechnie's Gaelic Without Groans

I discovered that Native languages, Cherokee and others--like Bengali and other ancient languages--didn't have gendered pronouns like "he" and "she.

After a few beers, my verbs stumble and my nouns can no longer talk straight. O! yes after a few good beers nouns blunder and verbs fall flat on their faces.