Quotes About Linguistics

The other Andamanese languages have no known relatives. They have five numbers: one, two, one more, some more, and all. On

As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue.

Barthes found the exit to this merry-go-round by reminding himself that "it is language which is assertive, not he." It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature by "add[ing] to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty

Arabic gives English technical terms such a nadir, azimuth, and zenith.

In English Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are named after the Germanic gods Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frig.

WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Lucas took out his cell phone, went online and looked up the plural of apparatus, and found that it was apparatus, or apparatuses, and not apparati. He said, "Huh," turned the phone off and thought about Johnson.

There aren't a lot of humans who speak more than one dialect of Forshan. I know all four of the major ones.' 'Impressive,' Duvall Said. 'I'm good with my tongue,' Dahl said. 'Now who's being forward?' Duvall asked.

Words pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

Os ucranianos não são como os russos: são um tipo de eslavo diferente. E embora na sua maioria falem e leiam russo, a sua língua é diferente e autónoma, mais parecida com as línguas eslavas do Sul do que com o Russo. Muitas palavras ucranianas, em particular palavras relativas ao mundo rural, são as mesmas que em húngaro, e muitas das suas palavras são mais parecidas com o checo do que com o russo.

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they're no good.

I speak twelve languages. English is the bestest

Today, the official national language is Italian. This is based on the dialect of Florence, although people from each region have their own accents and speak Italian in a slightly different way. In some northwest border regions near France the people may speak French; and German is spoken in the far north. Sardinia has its own language.

Of all the words that exist in any language only a bare minority are pure, unadulterated, original roots. The majority are "coined" words, forms that have been in one way or another created, augmented, cut down, combined, and recombined to convey new needed meanings, The language mint is more than a mint; it is a great manufacturing center, where all sorts of productive activities go on unceasingly.

Perhaps in time, Ella, the words we have lost will fade, and we will all stop summoning them by habit, only to stamp them out like unwanted toadstools when they appear. Perhaps they will eventually disappear altogether, and the accompanying halts and stammers as well: those troublesome, maddening pauses that at present invade and punctuate through caesura all manner of discourse. Trying so desperately we all are, to be ever so careful.

A verb has a hard enough time of it in this world when it is all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it a way over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German.

Don't gobblefunk around with words.

I only speak a little pigeon French. Just enough to get by with the little French pigeons.

Why is it that when you wipe up dust its called dusting but when you wipe up a spill its not called spilling? Just something to think about.

You know it's them books what make you talk funny.

Me neither, " Shane put in. "Homie don't play that.""I wonder, sometimes, if your generation speaks English at all, " Amelie said.

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly.