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Language Quotes
"Because Shakespeare's language is so expansive, we're under this misconception that it's difficult. But I discovered that it's easy because it's so brilliantly written. The words are perfect, and the language is intelligent and very emotional."
37
"What's the point of using words nobody knows or can say comfortably?"
37
"There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate."
37
"Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis good works make the man."
37
"Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction."
36
"Well, I am from India and I wanted to make films in English for the international market in India. So that was really the main thing, and then of course economically it was cheaper to make films in India."
36
"Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it."
36
"The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it."
36
"The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door."
36
"A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state."
36
"A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories."
36
"No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism."
36
"It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water."
36
"All I know is that I operate by going out to each of them and trying to learn the territory in which they operate. My language to each of them has to suit their brain."
36
"Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy."
36
"In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics."
36
"It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent."
36
"Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language."
35
"Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear."
35
"There is abundant proof that the opening of our ports always tends to raise the price of foreign corn to the price in the English market, and not to sink the price of British corn to the price in the continental market."
35
"It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip."
35
"But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too."
35
"The Germans and I no longer speak the same language."
35
"Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation."
34
"Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is."
34
"Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it."
34
"I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish."
34
"Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?"
34
"The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words."
34
"Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence."
34
"Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence."
34
"If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers."
34
"No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language."
33
"The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics."
33
"A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes; put him in the Dative case & what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case & how is it with him? Why he is den Hunden? ... Read moreBut suppose he happens to be twins & you have to pluralize him, what then? Why sir they'll swap that twin dog around thro' the four cases till he'll think he's an entire International Dog Show all in his own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that. I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way."
33
"Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar."
33
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
33
"I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very much part of Europe both in my upbringing and outlook."
33
"I want do a Mandarin language movie. It'll probably be the next movie I do after the one I do next."
33
"That helped me to keep in touch with myself and to keep in touch with this really quite extraordinary language and literature into which I had pushed a little way."
33
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