Quotes About Linguistics

I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words change their functions in that way. It's one of the most common phenomena about words. They start as one thing, and they end up as something else.

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible.

Initially, picking up the Dravadian language was a bit tough act.

Quootla had a suffix, - utl , that could be glued to the end of anything—nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, small rodents—and meant the word itself plus its opposite, simultaneously. It didn't always translate into Goreddi. Time/no-time almost made sense; blue/orange or fall/rise or dog/whatever-the-opposite-of-dog-is were perfectly intelligible in Quootla but boggling to nearly everyone else.

Astronomy is not the science of all objects with mass and weight and velocity. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies. Biology is not the science of all objects that consume and excrete and have inherited characteristics. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies. Linguistics is not the study of all possible symbols or symbol systems. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies.

Nor does linguistics need the nominal blessing of science. It is some sort of systematic, truth-seeking, knowledge-making enterprise, and as long as it brings home the epistemic bacon by turning up results about language, the label isn't terribly important. Etymology is helpful in this regard: science is a descendant of a Latin word for knowledge, and it is only the knowledge that matters.

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

The extraordinary thing about new words is that probably only about one per cent of them are new. Most are old words revived and adapted.

Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didn't even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.

We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

I've found that there are only two kinds [of slang] that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passé before it gets into print.

Le duc finit son verre, puis énonça cette remarque : — Ce qui me plaît dans l'essence de fenouil, c'est qu'il n'y a aucun autre mot qui rime avec. Avec fenouil. — À moins qu'on ne change de genre, dit Lalix.

Not every English sentence beginning with the word why is a legitimate question.

Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?

Language too is a brake upon social change.

If I was in charge of the dictionary I would have a right clear-out of words. Words like 'necrophilia' I'd get rid of. If someone has that (attraction to dead bodies), I'd make them say, 'I fancy dead bodies'. Then, at least when they tell people, they might realise how mental it sounds rather than it being hidden in a posh word. And then they'll stop having the problem. The fact that it has its own word makes it seem more acceptable.

Vanuatu has over 100 languages in use among the 230,000 population. I don't know how a place can run like this. Surely a lot of people have to speak a certain language for it to qualify as one.

Some examples for you: 'Mi wantem' is 'I would like'. 'Mi wantem' sounds like 'Me want them', which equals 'I would like'. 'Bitwin' is 'between'. 'Bisnis' is 'business'. By now you've probably got the hang of it, so I don't have to tell you what 'Gud moning' means. If you're still struggling you're a 'dik ed'.

Je suis désolé ,' he said. You had to wonder about the French, how they could make a simple 'sorry' sound so extreme and forlorn.

Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.

A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000.

Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.