Quotes About Linguistics

Stephen, what is the French for a double sister-block, coaked? With a pair of them and a proper hold-fast, I could raise the Temple.' 'A double sister-block, coaked? The Dear alone can tell. I do not even know what it is in English.

I taught from a book called Modern American English. 'You're lucky to have me. I'm a modern American and I speak English, I said.

Is there no room for art in the spoken language? What is the use of creating an unnatural language to the exclusion of the natural one?

Molly happy see Ammm," she said. The Porpoise language has 237 words that mean "happy," and Molly had actually chosen the one denoting the happiness derived from having one's belly tickled by seaweed.

In our language," he said, "Alf means squid poop.

The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night.

You may or may not have noticed an overall degradation of the language, and a proliferation of errors of spelling and grammar in even the most official documents?

Re which, again, please keep in mind that a language is both a map of the world and its own world, with its own shadowlands and crevasses-places where statements that seem to obey all the language's rules are nevertheless impossible to deal with.

It strikes me that EXIT signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit signs that say HE LEAVES.

We need an inflation-generative grammar.

I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

A feast of languages

Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy: ask me this slave in French What is his name. Boy- Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele? French Soldier- Monsieur le Fer. Boy- He says his name is Master Fer. PISTOL- Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in French unto him. Boy- I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.

I must thank the Hon. Gentleman for making me acquainted with the word "outwith," with which I had not previously had the pleasure of making acquaintance. For the benefit of English Members I may say that it is translated "outside the scope of." I thought it was a misprint at first.

Old words, he said, were the best of all, and he indulged in them: correctitude, palimpsest, parlementaire, guttersnipe, purblind.

By now they had mastered my own language, but they still made simple mistakes, like using 'hermeneutics,' when they meant 'heuristic'.

The plural of spouse is spice.

leaves out verbs and articles and pronouns and prepositions, in what those who know autism call "telegraphic speech.

have been at a great feast of languages," says Moth, "and stolen the scraps.")

The parallel, rather, is with human language. It is human to have the ability to speak, an essential part of the image of God in us. Nonetheless, concrete language, which exists in countless forms, is not native but acquired; it is learned.

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?

Interesting how our vocabulary responds, providing us with words we have never needed before, words stacked away for us, neatly folded into our brain and there for our use: like a bride's lifetime supply of linen, or a ducal trove of monogrammed china. Death will overtake us before a fraction of those words are used.

obsolete subject headings; for example, the word aeroplanes was replaced by airplanes.