Quotes About Linguistics

Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.

There is no question of the government or myself attaching less importance to the use of English.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that's nonsense.

Well, I couldn't speak English before I went to Belfast. So I learned English with a Northern Irish accent.

Guys say 'like' all the time, and no one notices it.

The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.

I love accents in general. I'm obsessed with dialects, and I had to write a whole movie about it called 'In a World...'

I have a weird obsession with people who can speak multiple languages. I'd love to be able to do that.

Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at. [p.93]

You see," continued the minister, bowing thankfully to the duke, "Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from. They're grown right here in our orchards.

In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense.

You who speak languages, you are such liars.

Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, A man who speaks but one language understands none.

You think—I dare say that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it We're destroying words—scores of them hundreds of them every day. It's a beautiful thing the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms there are also the antonyms.

Our own thesis was sketched in the Introduction: the classical written Chinese language—the language in which the Analects was composed—is unique, being sharply distinct not only from all non-Sinitic languages but from spoken Chinese as well (ancient and modern), and that the differences between the two Chinese languages are of greater linguistic and philosophical significance than has been generally noticed.

The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opting those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.

Not sure why. But you have to understand what the advent of language was like. The brain had done pretty well without it for quite a few million years. The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opting those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.

I was thinking,' said Crusher dreamily [...] 'about LANGUAGE and how in English two negatives make a positive, but in spriteish, a double negative is still a negative. However there is NO language in which two positives make a negative ...' 'Yeah right, like THAT'S the problem,' said Xar, sarcastically. 'I hadn't thought of that!' said Crusher in gentle surprise [...]. 'You're correct, Car. Yeah, right IS a statement in English where two positives make a negative...

the poem that philosophically makes good the defect of languages

Language communicates the linguistic being of things. The clearest manifestation of this being, however, is language itself. The answer to the question ' What does language communicate?' is therefore 'All language communicates itself.

Anything one man does that another man understands can be defined as language

One thing I never forgot from my Latin class is that a language that is descended from another language is called a daughter language. It was the beginning of the next era of my life, like this is of yours.

Sir, I can put a sentence together in English. But all my effort goes into remembering the right words.

Someone told me I need to stop dropping F-bombs. What the [f*@%] is an F-bomb?