Quotes About Linguistics

Being able to be dry in a second language is almost the last thing you learn.

My English is good because I have a good ear.

Icelanders love to speak English. Their English is a joy to hear because of how colloquial and idiomatic it is, but they appreciate your efforts with Icelandic.

I've always loved the English language. I just like words, you know?

For example, there are thousands of different linguistic words for water. The meanings all refer to water – and the substance can literally be pointed at in case of linguistic difficulties.

the soul concept is derived not from Latin but from early Old Nordic and Old Germanic sources. However, the terms "animate" and

If I'm a guy who doesn't seem so merry, It's just because I'm so misunderstood. When I was young I ate a dictionary, And that did not do me a bit of good. For I've absorbed so many words and phrases— They drive me dizzy when I want to speak. I start explaining but each person gazes As if I spoke in Latin or in Greek.

to speak that dialect called if

But, as I delved into Chinese for Dummies, I couldn't help but conclude that the Chinese language is the Great Wall of languages, a clever linguistic barrier erected to keep outsiders out. What, frankly, is wrong with Esperanto? Or alphabets? What is so deficient about an alphabet that uses a judicious twenty-six letters? We can make lots of words with those twenty-six letters, big words even.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.

In the eight-case system there is a tendency for precision of function while in the five-case system there is more room to see an author using a particular form to convey a fuller meaning than that of one function.

Case is the inflectional variation in a noun7 that encompasses various syntactical functions or relationships to other words. Or, put more simply, case is a matter of form rather than function. Each case has one form but many functions.

The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning.

In all my years in 'Countdown's' Dictionary Corner, the subject most guaranteed to rankle with our viewers is the presence of Americanisms in the dictionary.

Language is a virus from outer space.

American Sign Language—ASL—is a language unto itself, with its own syntax and grammar. Adjectives follow nouns, as in Romance languages.

Language was not given to man: he seized it.

Whale oil beef hooked,

I've said it once and I will say it again, why can't everyone just speak English? The Americans give it a bit of a go — why can't other nations?

poo parlor division" instead of "loo.

slubberdegullions.

so many languages have fallen off the edge of the world

it is possible that the Irish word for 'I play the fox', sionnachuighim, is where the word 'shenanigans' comes from.

He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love withsomeone, but that you "had love toward" her, as if itwere a physical thing you could present and hold—a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness.